Public Theology in an Age of World Christianity: God's Mission as Word-Event

Public Theology in an Age of World Christianity

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Public Theology in an Age of World Christianity God’s Mission as Word-Event Paul S. Chung

PUBLIC THEOLOGY IN AN AGE OF WORLD CHRISTIANITY

Copyright © Paul S. Chung, 2010. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–10268–2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chung, Paul S., 1958– Public theology in an age of world Christianity : God's mission as word-event / Paul S. Chung. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–10268–2 (alk. paper) 1. Missions—Theory. I. Title. BV2063.C495 2010 266.001—dc22

2009039957

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: April 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

CON T E N T S

Preface Introduction: God’s Mission as Word-Event in the Public Sphere and World Christianity

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1 Mapping God’s Mission in an Age of World Christianity

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2 Seeking God’s Mission as Word-Event in a Wider Horizon

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3 A Theology of Word-Event and Reformation

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4 Reconstructing God’s Narrative as Mission in a Hermeneutical-Intercultural Configuration

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5 Hermeneutic of God’s Narrative and Confucian Theory of Interpretation

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Intercultural Theology as a Prophetic Mission of God’s Narrative

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Conclusion

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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PR E FAC E

Christian community is located within civil society. Issues of the public sphere affect and shape congregational life and mission. Congregational life and mission are characterized in terms of God’s narrative through justifying grace and church’s gratitude toward public discipleship. The church is a witness to the universality of God’s narrative for all. This perspective marks the church as the community of communion, fellowship, mission, and diakonia. The public sphere has become more and more multicultural and multireligious. This is a challenge for and renewal of the Christian community. Now the truth claims of non-Christian religions and the full humanity of people of other cultures and religions become public issues. How do we understand Christian mission and evangelization in this complicated context? To what extent does the church engage and learn from the life world of non-Christian religions? What contribution can a Christian theology of mission make to the public sphere as the church struggles with these issues: solidarity and justice for the full humanity of those on the margin, recognition of religious outsiders, and engagement with emancipation from the socio-political system colonizing our life world? In the study of God’s narrative as mission of word-event in an age of World Christianity, I will begin to rearticulate and reinterpret a Christian concept of God’s mission and evangelization in light of the universal, irregular, and transversal horizon of God’s narrative as it pertains to the realities of public sphere. My basic conviction is that mission serves the Word of God which is revealed in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit for all. It is salient to develop a theology of Trinitarian mission through the perspective of God’s living word event in a hermeneutical, intercultural fashion. Here, a Trinitarian concept of missio Dei is deepened and refurbished in light of God as the subject of speaking through Israel, the church, and the face of innocent victims and religious outsiders. This perspective contextualizes and widens the mission of God’s narrative and deepens its universality in light of word-event―viva vox evangelii. Seen in this light, God is the one who speaks, weaving and narrating God’s salvific story and drama in covenant with Israel along with church, humanity, and the world. A hermeneutical ref lection on the relationship between ecclesial discourse and extra-biblical narratives (in light of the

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dynamism of God’s saying) becomes the driving force to reframe God’s mission as word-event and evangelization in an age of global Christianity. This project explores God’s narrative in the public sphere, dealing with a constructive proposal of a missiology in an analogical, discursive, and intercultural framework. A hermeneutical missiology of word event in connection with public theology deals with evangelization, church’s public discipleship, economic justice, ecological sustainability, an interreligious witness, and intercultural exchange. This book aims to emphasize important aspects of God’s narrative in the public sphere by conceptualizing and developing a missiology of word-event in prophetic and diaconal fashion. It undergirds intercultural, interpretative engagement with narrative of God’s grace of justification and reconciliation for the world. A missiology of word-event renders the aspects of God’s narrative more amenable and transculturally relevant to the reality of global Christianity. This spectrum is underscored for the sake of the church that transformatively acknowledges religious outsiders and advocates for those who are marginalized and voiceless in the public sphere. Special thanks are extended to my colleagues, friends, and students at Luther Seminary for their valued feedback, comments, and improvement on this project of a theology of Trinitarian Mission of Word-Event from a hermeneutical-intercultural perspective. I would also like to thank the following for giving permission in using selected texts: from the work of Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy F. Lull, with permission from Fortress press, 1989; from the work of Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1, II/2, IV/3.1. eds. Geoffrey W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, first paperback edition, 2004, with permission from T & T Clark and the Continuum International Publishing Group; from the work of The Poem of Ruan Ji, trans. Wu Fusheng and Graham Hartill, with permission from Zhonghua Book Company, 2006; from the work of Bonhoeffer’s poem, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, with permission from Macmillan, 1972; from the work of a Buddhist poem, Paul William, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations, with permission from Routledge, 1989. The Bible quotations and references are based on the New Revised Standard Version. 2010 New Year St. Paul, MN

Introduction: God’s Mission as Word-Event in the Public Sphere and World Christianity

Christian theology is a critical hermeneutical science of the Word of God that becomes a discipline in service of Christian faith and the proclamation of the living Word of God. Insofar as theology is a question about the God who speaks through the Scripture and in the church, there is a hermeneutical circle between theology and the ecclesial sphere. Theology arises from the practice of the church and constitutes its practical-missional needs. Christian theology, based on the Word of God and sacraments of ecclesial life, brings a universal message of the gospel and a special life of communion, fellowship, and diakonia together into the life of public sphere. An ecclesial dimension of theology is furnished with a special commission to the public sphere. Communion, fellowship, and diakonia mark the missional nature of the church located within the civil community. The Holy Spirit imparts faith and guidance for a life of Christian community as a serving church. Here it is essential to consider the missional character of the Word of God. Christian mission aims to communicate the narrative of God’s grace in Christ under the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the whole of creation. Subsequently, Christian mission as mission of God’s narrative characterizes the church as being publicly oriented in light of word-event. The church follows God’s mission as word-event, participating in preserving creation and being involved in society. Christian mission, grounded in the biblical narrative of God’s gracious justification, reconciliation, and vocation, takes on public concerns in light of the eschatological reality of God’s coming. The church receives its mandate of congregational mission from the gospel of Jesus Christ who is the living Lord of the church as well as the living Lord of world. The church’s mission is based on the

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living narrative of God’s grace in Christ that underscores justification, reconciliation, and vocation, and is practiced and embodied in a social location. We perceive the life world of the public sphere to be considerably inf luenced by the process of global civilization. Life in many public spheres is characterized and shaped by multiple cultures and religions in a pluralist and multicultural fashion. The challenge of diversity within global Christianity also arises, calling for a postmodern recognition of difference and otherness within indigenous reframings of the Christian religion. This challenge presents itself as an opportunity to overcome the limited nature of the church of the global North, which is considerably indebted to the Western Enlightenment model. Proponents of global Christianity or World Christianity1 argue that it is essential to translate the Christian narrative through indigenous languages, cultural-religious symbols, and belief systems rather than apply a Western theological system to the indigenous society. The relationship between Christian narrative and nonWestern cultural life world becomes one of the major issues. In an age of global Christianity, a classic concept of missio Dei is deemed inappropriate, because it is disengaged from hermeneuticalintercultural endeavor, issues of the public-ecological sphere, people of other faiths, and also from interdisciplinary dialog with the social and natural sciences. When Christian mission separates those issues from its evangelizing mandate—it is vulnerable to sidestep the public relevance of God’s mission for that society and the world. This is because we develop mission of word-event by engaging in the problem that the public theology raises and by taking into account the challenge of World Christianity. Faith Community and Public Theology In a different framework from a Christian theology of mission, public theology challenges the ecclesial narrowness of a Christian mission that is easily led into ecclesial-cultural imperialism. Public theology is carried out in interaction or correlation with theological research and social science. It also fosters dialog with people of other faiths and cultures, valuing the life horizon of multicultural and multireligious configurations in public society. Here, a sociological concept of civil society appears as the key to guide theological discourse with sociopolitical and cultural linguistic imagination and analysis.2 Globalized civilization is expanding its international politics and global economy through political power, the extension of capital, and the spread of information through mass media. It has saturated the infrastructure of the life world—shaping and generating social, cultural, and religious life according to the image of global capital. As the life world becomes thus colonized, we are aware of crisis, disorder, and loss of meaning, and of the

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dynamics of protest and the utopian desire for a better life. Running counter to the systematic colonization of the life world, a theology involved in dialog with sociocritical science attempts to retrieve and invigorate the prophetic vocation of missional congregations as public companions.3 Jürgen Habermas is especially representative of those who in this framework explore the significance of critical communicative theory for public theology. If public opinion can be formed in the realm of social life, a public sphere becomes the commonplace for enabling conversation among members of society, thus allowing them to form a public opinion. Here it is essential to consider a communicative understanding and rationality that is significant and valuable for the public nature and character of Christian theology. True public life in a civil society is led and constituted by open conversation, plural discourses, intersubjective consensus, discursive ethical orientation, and diverse communities. Thereby Christian public theology cannot exist independent of the public domain.4 Subsequently, public theology mobilizes Christian engagement in the major issues of society in an intellectual and practical grounding. It expresses its relevance for all humanity, instead of confining the discourse to the churchly sphere. For instance, if humanity is created in God’s image, genetic research and ecology have implications for a Christian doctrine of creation. The Christian belief system of creation needs to be rearticulated and refined in dialog with the scientific theory of evolution. The public theology views the fruits of modern biological, cosmological, and social sciences in light of the mystery of God’s creativity. All the while, it also argues that all human sciences must be conducted in the service of truth and righteousness. This tests the moral and spiritual values of scientific discourse while regarding the arrogant exploitations of the earth.5 Public theology often addresses practical and public issues of faith communities using the secular language of human rights, public justice, or peace. Here theology is one of the many voices among many ideas and disciplines in the vast competing field of the public sphere with no privileged status. Public theology attempts to deal with theological meaning and discourse in connection with a wide matrix of human cultural and public experiences. Here it tends to transcend or underdevelop a unique ecclesial narrative of God’s Word. Public perspective has a growing profile and importance in theology internationally and geopolitically. Public theology, accordingly, aims to foster nonpartisan and open theological research along with other religions. Human experience of life and culture tends to undermine the ecclesial community and its narrative, while inspiring theology to be in the service of human life in the wider pubic realm.6 Given this fact, public theology is relatively a new subject, although Christian theologians insist that theology has always had public implications.7 There are three discernable attempts to construct public theology. The first deciphers the role of the institutional church in the public realm or characterizes a public orientation of the ecclesial community.8 Here public

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theology is defined and conceptualized in Anselm’s fashion (“I believe in order that I may understand”), utilizing Clifford Geertz’s concept of “thick description.” This cultural—anthropological concept “begins with ‘exceedingly extended acquaintances with extremely small matters” and moves slowly and cautiously to ‘broader interpretations and abstract analyses.’ ”9 In order to gain a detailed and thick understanding of the social, cultural, and moral context, this type of public theology begins from the standpoint of faith which is based on the revelation of Jesus Christ. This public theology is of a nonfoundational and descriptive character, seeking to provide a justification of Christian belief specific and unique to the Christian faith, ecclesial community, and church tradition. Here, “nonfoundational” means redescribing the internal logic and narrative of the Christian faith.10 The second strives to relate the public character of theological discourse in interdisciplinary dialog with social sciences.11 As Stackhouse argues, scripture, tradition, reason, and experience remain guides for the reconstruction of public theology in constant interaction with social human sciences in an ecumenical, global, interreligious, and pluralistic age.12 Distinct from Stackhouse, David Tracy’s hermeneutical position is closer to Habermas’ theory of communicative action, appreciating Habermas’ endeavor to develop philosophical discussions of rationality in regard to sociological discussions of modernity. Tracy’s proposal clarifies the nature of public theology as fundamental, hermeneutical, systematical, and practical in terms of the revised correlational method.13 Tracy identifies three publics—society, the academy, and the church— relevant to public theology. A public theology is to: (1) make the structure and logic of the argument explicit, (2) present arguments available to all rational persons, and (3) demonstrate that the theological position is grounded not in the internal logic of the Christian faith but in some form of general philosophical arguments. Philosophical arguments generally available to human existence serve as the major warrant and support for all claims.14 The third proposal recognizes the limitations of these two attempts and devises a theological mode of discourse as it pertains to a wide pubic arena; promoting the well-being of our common life in our nation and our world, and transcending the boundaries between religious and secular spheres.15 Accordingly, this public theology often takes the public agenda as its own agenda, and seeks to offer distinctive and constructive insights to help in the building of a deliberate and democratic civil society, the restraint of evil, the curbing of violence, nation building, reconciliation in the public arena, and so on. A public theology in the liberative-feminist fashion addresses broad national sociopolitical circumstances, a concern for the quality of our communal lives wholly as a social, an emancipatory project to take a stand for justice, and the coalition of struggle across racial, cultural, gender, class, and religious lines in the realm of civil society.16

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God’s Mission as Word-Event in the Public Sphere As one considers these different directions of public theology, my investigation of God’s mission as word-event strives to explore and communicate the Christian narrative of viva vox evangelii (living voice of gospel) to all in the public sphere as well in the whole of creation. Utilizing this hermeneutical-missional light, I will attempt to illuminate a pubic theology for an age of global Christianity. This theology of mission is constructed in a diaconal, public, and prophetic fashion when it promotes God’s mission in solidarity with God’s minority people who are marginalized, voiceless, and victimized. God’s mission as word-event is not exhausted or replaced by public theology in a correlational, liberative, or civil society framework. Rather it significantly develops the prophetic-diaconal insights of a Christian theology of mission concerning God’s narrative in a hermeneutical-discursive framework that pertains to public issues in multiculturalized and colonized life spheres as well as to challenge global Christianity. Trinity, Christology, and ecclesiology, which are important principles for public theology,17 need to be cross-culturally rearticulated and refurbished in light of divine word-event. Thus a missiology of God’s narrative stands in support of the public sphere in an age of global Christianity. In the current project of discussing God’s mission as word-event in an age of global Christianity, it is essential to propose a public theology of God’s narrative while regarding God’s speech event that can transpire in an ecclesial as well as an extra-ecclesial sphere. The central issue in this book is the hermeneutical-intercultural exploration of God’s narrative as it relates to public issues such as diaconal discipleship, public-ecological justice, Jewish-Christian relations, promotion of the human rights of those on the economical margin, and intercultural fertilization and enrichment in a global and intercultural context. Subsequently, an investigation of God’s mission as word-event will be theologically hermeneutically undertaken and conceptualized in order to construct a public missiology of God’s narrative in a wider public and intercultural horizon. Christian theology is a form of bearing witness to the mystery, grace, and presence of God in the public embodiment of Jesus Christ as attested to in Scripture through the Spirit and mediated through ecclesial tradition and confessional language. God’s narrative in Jesus Christ for all tells of God as the One who desires and seeks a loving relationship with Israel, the church, humanity, and the world. The reality of God’s self- communication in Christ requires human witness and interpretation, while inspiring and transcending it. The human witness, when it comes to the subject matter of divine reality, must be questioned and interpreted anew in different places and times. In this task, the search for a new interpretation endeavors to understand, actualize, and deepen the Word of God in an everchanging context. This interpretive strategy moves beyond every kind of dogmatism and galvanizes the ecclesial community to be more relevant for and accountable to non-Christian communities in the public sphere.

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In the theological realm, John’s Prolog articulates physical embodiment: The Word became f lesh. Without Philip’s interpretation of this embodied Word, the Ethiopian eunuch would not be capable of accepting it for his life (Acts 8:26). Interpretation is an important dimension of the Christian narrative of gospel (kerygma). It connects people with the embodied Word, which became human f lesh. Christian mission as the interpretation of the Word of God takes shape in the public sphere, acculturating a bodily dimension of the Christian narrative and projecting its prophetic resistance to the reality of violence and injustice. The public relevance of biblical narrative is revealed in the biblical witness in the act of God’s speech through the life-giving and prophetic testimony, and is highlighted in the statement that God justifies us through faith in Jesus Christ and is reconciled with the world through Jesus’ death and resurrection. In light of God’s reconciliation, the church is primed for and called to undertake public discipleship in conformity with the living voice of Jesus Christ in the world: in dialog with Israel and religious outsiders, as well as promoting a prophetic word of life, justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation in the public sphere. God’s narrative in the gospel becomes reality in the embrace of those whom Christ names as his brothers and sisters: the stranger, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, and the captive—in short, the lowest of the low (Matt 25: 35–45), God’s minority people. This perspective shapes God’s mission of word-event as a theology of public vocation in a hermeneutical sense. In an era marked by the clash of civilizations,18 church’s mission of God’s narrative is connected with the life world of the public sphere, immersing itself into sociopolitical and religious-cultural spheres in order to become more ethically and interreligiously responsible. Such theology of mission in a public-ethical profile creates a new way of interpreting God’s narrative by engaging with postcolonial theory, postmodern philosophy, and the wisdom and scholarship of religious outsiders. For a mission of word-event in the public-prophetic configuration, it is an important task to strive to adopt an interpretation that engages with God’s free act of speaking for emancipation through the face of the Other in the public realm and one that is inculturated by drawing on the wisdom of non-Christian religions. A postfoundational and analogical approach to God’s narrative implies a theological-hermeneutical way of thinking in an ethical manner that steers between the totalizing universalism of modernity and the nihilistic-deconstructive relativism of postmodernity. The term postfoundational is hermeneutically relevant to a sociocultural and linguistic episteme that makes reference to the transversal irregularity of God’s word-event. The irregular, transversal side of God’s narrative can be heard through the face of the other and does not necessarily contradict the regular side of God’s Word in the form of physicality and incarnation. Rather this irregular side polemically continues, articulates, and promotes

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the prophetic, diaconal horizon of God’s narrative in the gospel of Jesus Christ in fellowship and solidarity with the other. On the irregular side of God’s speech event, it is imperative to articulate the word-event as the free act of God’s speech. God may speak to the church through the worldly affairs in a completely different manner than would be expected from the regular side. This irregular perspective opens the door to a transversal and localized uniqueness of people’s narratives in different times and places. Instead, it does not domesticate their difference into the exceptions of the Western ecclesial sphere. It is one thing to speak or to interpret, whereas it is quite another thing to practice or perform. Nonetheless, the performance depends on one’s definition and interpretation of reality in a sociocultural public setting. Mediating interpretation with missional praxis calls for deliberately analyzing the public relevance of the Christian narrative to human life, where human speech and act intersect. Interpretation, as seen in light of a history of effect, inheres in human life in the public sphere because of the use of language in daily communication. Being historical implies that one’s knowledge can never be complete.19 A fusion of horizons between the past and the present within human life is dialectically structured and dynamically oriented in openness toward the future. The dynamism of this fusion of horizons challenges narrowness in any given society and pushes for an expansion of new horizons. The public sphere, the sociological setting in which we live, is not fixed; rather it is malleable and in f lux. Having considered this, an ontologically oriented theory of interpretation must be alert to the underside of the universal history of religion, because this universal history is vulnerable to being used in the service of the powerful. Cultural-religious language not only houses and is a source of human life, but can also be an instrument of distorted communication and discourse, shaping and dominating ideological-linguistic structures and human understanding by sidestepping sociocultural factors. An analysis of the false consciousness that is grounded in publicly institutionalized legitimation and religious cultural discourse is the indispensable part of an analogical-discursive concept of God’s mission as word-event. Such an analysis takes into account the marginalized and deviated discourse of those who are buried in the underside of history. In our task of finding public missiology of the word-event, it is essential to reconstruct the traditional and classical concept of missio Dei in light of transversal irregularity of God’s narrative in an age of global Christianity. A fusion of multiple horizons takes place not only in human engagement with the tradition, but irregularly and transversally also in an encounter of Christian narrative and non-Christian life world. In this light we engage in global Christianity, the postmodern and postcolonial challenge, the crisis of economic globalization, and intercultural exchange.

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Public Theology in an Age of World Christianity Organizational Themes in the Study of Public Theology in Light of God’s Mission as Word-Event

In the project of public theology in light of God’s mission as word-event, a linguistic–transcultural aspect plays an important role in elaborating an irregular and transversal horizon of word-event in the public sphere. For this task we take the example of a Chinese chess game. As in guerrilla warfare, each piece in the chess game retains a unique, localized, and transversal function, having little to with upholding king-empire centrism or a metanarrative of totalization in the game. With this imagery in mind, I shall attempt to critically develop a theology of the Word of God (Luther and Barth) along with a new hermeneutic (Ebeling), by placing their linguistic insights in relationship with Tracy’s analogical imagination of similarity-in-dissimilarity and Foucault’s discursive analysis of the knowledge-power interplay in the public sphere. A linguistic view of God’s speech event in an analogical-discursive manner will be constructed with emphasis on Levinas’ ethic of the face of the other as well as that of all living creatures in ecological crisis. A hermeneutical, sociocritical ref lection on divine discourse, both in a regular-ecclesial and an irregular-extra-ecclesial horizon, also undergirds a linguistic-transcultural model in dealing with the living voice of God and the church’s evangelizing discipleship in a global, intercultural context. Here, an irregular perspective on word-event articulates a transversal dimension of receiving God’s narrative in transcultural exchange and communication within global Christianity. Given the multidimensional horizon of God’s mission as divine discourse, a theology of word-event upholds God’s mission as public theology in an age of global Christianity by constructively integrating analogical-discursive theory into a linguistic-transcultural model. All the while, an irregular-transversal horizon of word-event and its cultural expression is underscored in solidarity with those on the margin and innocent victims—God’s massa perditionis, minjung. Chapters 1 and 2 are an attempt to map a theology of God’s mission in the context mentioned above. These two chapters relate to a reinterpretation of the theology of missio Dei in a wider spectrum and horizon. A theological reconstruction of mission of word-event will be undertaken in light of the pro–missio of God. This theological reconstruction will revisit a theological-Trinitarian discussion of missio Dei and extend Christian mission in a postmodern-pluralist context. An exploration of the postmodern issue will be undertaken in regard to the emergence of World Christianity and the postcolonial challenge. Here, we will deal with the theology of God’s mission and economic justice as an alternative to global capitalism in crisis. A discussion of Christian mission cannot avoid the church’s responsibility for the issue of political economy as well as ecological justice in the whole of creation. In continuity with the construction of a missiology of God’s narrative in a wider spectrum, Chapter 2 further examines a mission of word-event in connection with God’s covenant with Israel

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and along with Trinitarian eschatology. A hermeneutical ref lection of the Word of God in a post–Shoah contour facilitates Christian mission’s engagement with the public sphere and religious outsiders. Chapter 2 is in continuity with Chapter 1, further developing a theology of God’s word as missional event in a wider spectrum, while pertaining to several public and intercultural issues where the classic concept of missio Dei left off. Chapter 3 demonstrates an attempt to read and interpret Western Protestant theologians such as Martin Luther and Karl Barth from the theological perspective of word-event. Their theological legacy will be missionally and interculturally taken up and developed toward a missiology of word-event in the world of many religions and cultures. In this interpretation of Luther and Barth, these two important theologians will be retrieved and appreciated as inspirers for us to develop a public missiology of God’s narrative in a prophetic-diaconal fashion for JewishChristian relationship as well as political-ethical responsibility. Their theological legacy of the Word of God will be discussed and integrated to develop an intercultural reframing of their thoughts in a global context. Chapter 4 investigates a missiology of God’s narrative from the perspective of intercultural hermeneutics. A public missiology of word-event is sharpened in an intercultural horizon where it engages people’s lives in the public sphere of many cultures and religions. In discussing several models (accommodation, indigenization, inculturation, and contextualization) this chapter will further deal with the relation of Christian narrative to culture in light of analogical hermeneutics. In this light, a public missiology of God’s narrative is construed and constructed in an analogical and intercultural framework. In Chapter 5 we shall be concerned with developing a public theology of God’s narrative as we are conversant with Confucian theory of interpretation. Here, the mission of God’s narrative will be deepened by an intercultural theory of interpretation as we demonstrate our understanding of biblical and extra-biblical narratives from a hermeneuticalanalogical perspective. For construction of a new hermeneutic of God’s narrative in an analogical-discursive fashion—localized, intercultural, and liberative—an example will be made by an intercultural study of hermeneutics between the Greek tradition (Plato and Aristotle) and neoConfucian tradition (Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming). Given the intercultural exchange, an aesthetic-transforming dimension of word-event will be shaped and projected by a poetic imagination in a cross-culturally wider spectrum. Chapter 6 demonstrates an intercultural theological perspective on the Trinity, Christology, and ecclesiology as a prophetic mission of God’s narrative that is significant in an age of global Christianity. These three major theological themes will be explored and reconstructed in light of the transversal irregularity of God’s narrative as it pertains to a theological engagement with East Asian cultural life world. Intercultural theology is identified as a prophetic-hermeneutical endeavor to develop a mission

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of God’s narrative in the global Christianity. It attempts to reframe traditional theological themes such as Trinity, Christology, and ecclesiology in terms of intercultration, public responsibility, prophetic witness, and emancipation. Given the organizational themes and theological debates in this writing project, I hope that this book can be received as a constructive proposal for the improvement of a classic concept of missio Dei in the direction of mission of God’s narrative with a public-diaconal commitment to viva vox Dei in a broadened globalized world. Thus God’s mission as word-event undergirds public missiology in an age of global Christianity.

CH A P T E R

1

Mapping God’s Mission in an Age of World Christianity

At the turn of the third millennium, it has been argued that the Christian world’s center of gravity has shifted from Europe and North America to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We observe that Christianity is doing very well, expanding and thriving in the global South. The phrase “a White Christian” begins to sound like an oxymoron in view of the expansion of the church in the Southern hemisphere. We may recognize the assembly meeting of the World Council of Churches in Zimbabwe in 1998 as an acknowledgment of the increasing significance of the churches in Africa in an era of global Christianity. The rise of the new Christianity is characterized by the decline of European Christianity and a shift in demographics of the Christian population to the Southern hemisphere.1 This phenomenon of world churches necessitates the renewal and extension of a Christian theology of God’s mission in a wider global spectrum. This broader theology must seriously consider the non-Western formation, distinctive character, and direction of the Christian religion different from Christian theology in Europe and North America. World Christianity radically breaks from the Enlightenment framework which has been and is still inf luential in Western Christianity. The emergence of World Christianity requires a theology of God’s mission to adopt a global configuration and develop implications that are more amenable to a wider horizon amidst a postmodern–pluralist challenge. In the twilight of postmodernism, where all cats are gray, seeking a theology of God’s mission as word-event is not an easy task. We must engage the reigning “plausibility structure” according to which patterns of belief and practice are accepted within a given society and are diversely expressed in a different time and place.2 This chapter explores a theology of God’s mission in an ecumenical-global context by mapping it in engagement with postmodern theory, postcolonial theology, and the economic issues of globalization that challenge Christian mission as part of the emergence of World Christianity.

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Public Theology in an Age of World Christianity Transforming Mission in the Face of the Postmodern Challenge

Transforming mission requires a paradigm shift in how we understand God’s mission in the face of the emergence of World Christianity in a global and postmodern context. To increase our understanding of the importance and growth of World Christianity, it is helpful to review postmodern theory, which is in contrast to an Enlightenment worldview. Postmodern theoreticians attack the legacy of the modern Enlightenment. The problem with modernity is related to the question of how to assess the legacy of what the Western world has inherited from the Enlightenment. As Isaiah Berlin states, “the eighteenth century is perhaps the last period in the history of Western Europe when human omniscience was thought to be an attainable goal.” 3 The Cartesian principle of cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) set the agenda for the centrality of the human mind in subsequent centuries. As Descartes states, “But I soon noticed that while I thus wished to think everything false, it was necessarily true that I who thought so was something. Since this truth, I think, therefore I am, [or exist,] was so firm and assured that all the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics were unable to shake it, I judged that I could safely accept it as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking.” 4 The Cartesian principle of the certainty of the “thinking I” finds its apex in Kant’s philosophy of critical reason. For Kant the autonomous self is elevated to the center of his philosophy of reason in which human reason assumes the pseudodivine and transcendent position. In his essay “What is Enlightenment?” Kant quotes Horace’s Sapere aude! (Dare to Know) and argues that the free exercise of human reason is fundamental to the distinctiveness of the Enlightenment; it is a removal of all external constrains and restriction from the freedom of human reason. The individual exercise of critical reason replaces the authoritative place of religion and metaphysics. Kant’s notion of the transcendental subject or reason undergirds the banner of Enlightenment. “Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another . . . ‘Have courage to use your own reason’–that is the motto of enlightenment.” 5 The legacy of the Enlightenment is that it placed emphasis on the autonomy of human reason, human rights, and the struggle for a just society. The notion of Enlightenment generated technological marvels and advancements in the twenty-first century. On the other hand, it also unleashed the exercise of instrumental reason that resulted in human dominion over the natural world and ecological devastation.6 In an analysis of the Western process of modernization, Max Weber (1864–1920) introduces and examines the concept of purpose–rationality.

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According to Weber, the rise of purpose–rationality leads to disenchantment with the world and religious worldviews. This process of disenchantment has gradually led Western people to a reliance on the technological control of nature and society as well as a loss of meaning. In Weber’s diagnosis, Western civilization unfettered by disenchantment with the world, has unleashed the one-sided development of human purpose–rationality. Through human mastery over the external world, the Western form of reason has become instrumentalized, resulting in the state of an iron cage.7 Criticizing Weber’s view of the Western form of instrumental reason, Habermas proposes, more constructively than Weber, a theory of communicative rationality. Habermas grounds his theory in the life of the public sphere in order to salvage the life world from colonization under political power, capital, and a distorted communication via mass media.8 Unlike Habermas, Foucault shares Weber’s diagnosis of Western civilization. He demonstrates an analysis of debunking the dominantly structured interplay between power and knowledge in the religious institution, political structure, ideological legitimation, and institutionalization. Knowledge is the product of power, and here Foucault echoes Nietzsche’s will to power; knowledge is linked to power because of its connection to discourse. Differentiating language from discourse, Foucault contends that language recognizes itself as the world while discourse exhibits itself as a representation of the world. Knowledge is connected to discursive formation. For instance, psychiatry declares that schizophrenics exist and thus views them as the object of therapy. Discursive practices and institutions produce claims to knowledge that are useful in the system of power. Truth stands in a reciprocal relationship with systems of power that reveal themselves as they engage correlatively with the intervention of truth. The desire to know is fueled by interests in domestication and control of the past in order to validate present structures. Power–knowledge relations are analyzed in historical narratives and transformations. The correlative constitution of power and knowledge determines the forms and possible domains of human knowledge in a given society.9 Foucault calls for an effective history that admits that historians’ knowledge and perspectives condition their histories. Fundamental to Foucault’s interpretative strategy of genealogy is a theoretical endeavor to analyze how the form of a historical narrative has served the interests of power and domination. He argues for the mobilization of resistance to the hegemonic truth claim of reason for the sake of those who are excluded, marginalized, and silenced by reason. The goal of modernity is to devise an overarching description of human history under the theme of the progress or emancipation of humankind. Under the banner of this global, systematic, and grand discourse, modern scholarship masks the truth rather than reveals it. Genealogy offers an interpretive and analytical tool for Foucault to unmask all suppressed

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forms of discourse. It analyzes the dominant conditions that allow for the current discourse to exist as a truth and how it gains political power and effectiveness. Instead of constructing a comprehensive master view of history, genealogy deconstructs the unifying concept of human-centered history by bringing up the discontinuity between the present and the past. Genealogy is a counter critique of all attempts to grasp reality within a totalizing and globally unifying theory; it debunks the false claim to legitimized validity that underlies and structures every given sociocultural order or system of knowledge (episteme). Humanity is no longer the central concern of human knowledge and social science; it is a fiction composed by modern human science. Rather than becoming the ultimate source and ground for language, the self is constituted in and through language. “Man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge . . . .One can be certain that man is a recent invention within it . . . One can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face frown in sand at the edge of the sea.” 10 On the other hand, at a philosophical level, the most significant critique of Descartes and Kant finds its voice in Martin Heidegger. The human being is not primarily a thinking self. Rather the human being is a being-in-the-world, enmeshed in personal, social, and linguistic networks. Da-sein (being in, or being there) is fundamentally being-in-theworld. This concept speaks out against the Cartesian–Kantian concept of the autonomous self. Human embeddedness in the world facilitates our understanding of the human being in connection with all three dimensions of temporality—past, present, and future. Heidegger bolsters up a bitter critique of the Platonic–Western view of truth, arguing that this Western tradition transforms truth into the certainty of representational thinking. In the representational train of thought, truth is seen as the correspondence between our statement and the reality existing outside us. According to Heidegger, truth is relational; we speak of truth only insofar as we interpret it by participating in the world. It has little to do with the search for a truth existing outside of human experience. Truth reveals or manifests itself to us, calling us to engage in meditative thinking rather than involving modern calculative thinking. Language as the house of being brings the human world into existence. Inspired by Heidegger’s insight into history as the presupposition of human understanding and language, Gadamer conceptualizes his notion of the history of effect or inf luence. Understanding belongs to the being of that which is understood.11 He credits Heidegger for the notion of human being-in-the-world, that is, a historical being. We can never transcend the historical life setting that continues to inf luence and condition us in an ongoing way. Different interpretations of the world can be appreciated because they come from a shared reality: tradition, language, and history of effect. Everyone’s interpretation differs because it is shaped and affected by one’s

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own tradition, language, and history. A different history affects and generates a different perspective and a different interpretation. The historical consciousness is involved in a mediation between the past and present. Language is seen as the universal domain which mediates past and present. The human relation to the world is thoroughly linguistic, hence intelligible. Meaning emerges as a text and an interpreter engages in a dialog, in a hermeneutical conversation. In this hermeneutical dialog or circle, we anticipate the experience of a fusion of horizons or a conf luence of the world of the text with the world of the interpreter. Interpretation experienced as a fusion of horizons is dynamic and open ended, calling for an ongoing and open-ended hermeneutical conversation. Thus, interpretation is no longer fixed or confined to the author’s or interpreter’s intent. In the project of interpreting a text, the interpreter and the world become involved with each other’s horizons, thereby creating meaning in a new and different way. However, a Heideggerian–Gadamerian notion of human being-in-the world is challenged and corrected by a postmodern view of the human being-in-the world of “the other.” Heidegger’s project of a hermeneutic of ontology is deeply challenged by Levinas’ ethic which is associated with a hermeneutics of the “Infinite’s Saying” through the face of the other. The other is associated with “God’s Saying”; thus, Levinas does not hesitate to accuse the Western philosophical tradition of totalizing or reducing the other and the different to the same. Here, the difference is ontologically domesticated; the many is reduced to one. The task of Western philosophy is to overcome otherness. Levinas contends that the other cannot be fully translated or comprehended through the rational coherence of language. God and the other are not translatable or exhaustible into language.12 Levinas contends that the God revealed in the Jewish-Christian tradition manifests God’s self only in traces, as seen in Moses’ experience with God in the Exodus. In Levinas’ view, approaching God in this regard implies coming to the other rather than following divine traces.13 This is because Levinas distinguishes discourse in terms of “the saying” and “the said.” For him, “the said” [le dit] is not equated with “the saying” [le dire] itself. Philosophy produces instances of “the said,” but every “said” is preceded and transcended by a “saying.” The “said” must be brought back to the “saying.” The saying does not exhaust itself in representational expression (apophansis). “Apophansis does not exhaust what there is in saying.” 14 A discursive aspect of saying comes to the fore as it relates to the transcendence of God who keeps the place of the other. Therefore, a hermeneutical meaning is vulnerable to the ethical claim of justice if it is disengaged from an ethical commitment to God’s discursive action through the other. In the Western Christian tradition, the other has been labeled in diverse ways: it was heathen from the sixteenth century through the period of

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colonialism; then it was unenlightened and irrational in the age of reason. In the twentieth century the other was called different. A century ago the privileged citizen of any developed Western nation marginalized, deproblematized, and did not recognize women, slaves, native and indigenous people, and homosexuals. This marginalization of otherness in earlier times was successfully accomplished by the prevalence of what Lyotard calls “metanarratives.” Thus, Lyotard concisely defines postmodernity as “incredulity toward metanarratives.” 15 A modern theory of the grand or universal narrative faces the challenge of a plurality of conf licting legitimating narratives. We have entered into an age of combat between modernists and postmodernists fighting for the survival or demise of the metanarrative. Postmodernists argue that the idea of a grand narrative is no longer credible and tenable. Postmodern resistance wages war on totality, universality, and the metaphysical story of grand sameness raised by modernity. The postmodern condition begins with dethroning the grand narrative. Postmodernists argue that the model of modernity and Enlightenment designates any science that legitimates itself as a metadiscourse. But in doing so modernity makes an explicit appeal to the metadiscourse. For instance, such metadiscourse can be noted in the dialectic of Hegel’s phenomenology of the Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, or the Marxist notion of the emancipation of the working subject. “In the Enlightenment narrative . . . the hero of knowledge works toward a good ethico–political end.” 16 Metanarratives attempt to explain the complex and unique horizons of human life in different times and places by totalizing all of them into the concept of oneness or sameness. Under the power of the metanarrative, which totalizes and reduces the specific, different, and unique narratives into a metaphysic of the sameness, it is clear that the voice of the other and the different is unheard, unnoticed, and suppressed. The banner of the different and other in a postmodern configuration represents the postmodern passion and spirit of resistance by deconstructing the dominion of the metanarrative. Theoreticians of postmodernity take issue with modernists who continue the legacy of the Enlightenment. The latter attempts to fulfill the incomplete project of modernity by correcting its limitations. We have considered the necessity of transforming mission with regard to the postmodern challenge. We undergo a crisis with the great master narrative of the Western Christian message when we consider the reality of World Christianity. The church for others is challenged to become the church in recognition of and solidarity with the others. A theological concept of God’s mission is required to be a missiology of God’s word-event in accompaniment with the other, so it is refurbished and constructively redefined to become more dialogical and relevant to the postmodern global challenge. Such a missiology observes that an instrumental way must give way to a communicative way of thinking with the others in the public sphere. As David Bosch argues, “Togetherness, interdependence,

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symbiosis” are integrated to promote an “epistemology of participation” in God’s mission that accompanies the others.17 Christian Mission in the Emergence of World Christianity Surrounding the debate over the incomplete project of the Enlightenment in an emerging postmodern context, a notable challenge is present and heard in the rapid growth of the Pentecostal or revivalist church in Latin America, Africa, and South Korea. The trend of new charismatic churches undergirds the Christian resurgence in a worldwide context. The single largest congregation in the world is Yoido Full Gospel church in Seoul, South Korea, pastored by David Paul Yonggi Cho. Evangelism and church growth are fundamental to Cho’s teaching of triple blessings of salvation, that is, salvation of the soul, healing of the body, and material blessings from God. Cho, in emphasizing miraculous healing, exorcism, and God’s material blessings, is charged with shamanizing Christianity. But contrary to the criticisms of his mega church ministry, Cho’s church has begun to demonstrate social concern through welfare programs.18 Koo D. Yun, a Korean American scholar, attempts to integrate missio Dei and sociopolitical minjung with the Pentecostal concept of minjung and affective conversion, thus improving the limitation of Cho’s charitable social concern, He insists that we have to see the growth in the Pentecostal– Charismatic church in light of the particular–universal work of the Holy Spirit.19 A phenomenology of the demise of the Christian religion in the global North is ironically juxtaposed with a resurgence of the Christian religion in the global South. Secularization through disenchantment with the world in Western civilization unfortunately produces anarchy of meaning and commercialization of society. Furthermore, it upholds a resurgence of polytheistic religious values. Against this trend, the resurgence of the Christian religion is noted for a Pentecostal–charismatic revivalism. Along with the process of globalization, it is said that a new wave of resurgence of the Christian religion is anchored in the Southern Hemisphere and its continents.20 In the North American context mainline churches face a crisis in the form of the challenge of the nondenominational church. Symptoms of this crisis include declining church membership and youth involvement. All the while various eruptions of the electronic church and TV evangelists continue. Traditional worship faces its demise and confusion or misconception of the gospel message is visible in the religious mentality of prosperity. Nontraditional and postdenominational churches emerge and proliferate, as can be seen in the success of mega churches.21 In addition, the emergence of Asian religions in North America is remarkable. This trend no longer makes the phrase “North American Buddhist or Confucian” a contradictory term. The religious landscape

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of North America has radically changed in the past thirty years. It has become the most religious and ethnically diverse nation in the world. Multiculturalism has become a term that expresses the sociopolitical and religious reality of North American society, that is, a land of many religions and cultures. In the sociological sphere, Habermas articulates the colonization of the life world in the public sphere. Furthermore, according to Huntington, the global world is locked in the clash of civilizations in the process of remaking a world order.22 A life world is colonized and reified by the power of politics, economics, and the mass media which has a tremendous impact on human life in the public sphere. Subsequently, an encounter between different cultures and civilizations is prone to cause clashes and conf lict of different religious and cultural belief systems and discourses rather than leading to observable communicative consensus. This reality of “the marbling of civilization and peoples” 23 becomes vulnerable to a clash of civilization when the reality of multiculturalism is disengaged from an effective strategy of communication in the life of a public sphere saturated with many cultures and religions. Religious traditions, such as rivers, are dynamic and evolving in varying contexts. American Buddhists frame and stamp Asian Buddhism with a specifically American character. Christians and Jews encounter Buddhists, who then articulate their belief system and orientation anew and interreligiously in light of mutual respect and recognition. E Pluribus Unum (from many, one), our unum is expressed in the midst of plurality.24 The postcolonial era is marked by a multicultural reality of religious pluralism. The legacy of Christendom that had been formed by the Constantinian system or Western civilization is coming to an end. The corpus Christianum that enjoyed an alliance of church and state has upheld a cultural–religious and political hegemony of the Christian religion as the privileged religion of Western society in the form of an institutionalized church. The Corpus Christianum (often translated as the Christian body) described the premodern notion of the community of all Christians united under the Catholic Church. The church with its overarching authority attempted to create a religiously uniform community of Christians as can be seen in the Crusades and the defense against the Ottomans in the Balkans and the Inquisition with its anti-Jewish pogroms. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 officially ended this idea with the principle of cuius regio, eius religio (“whose the region is, his religion”). Nonetheless, in the current clash of civilizations in the global context, the idea might be resurgent in an attempt to emphasize the West in contrast to non-Western cultures. In this light, mission is unfortunately regarded as a propaganda business of the Western church that has benefited the pagans outside of the Western civilization. Consequently, the discipline of mission or missiology has become a marginalized discipline that is only an appendage of ecclesiology. In other words, it has come to be seen as having little to do with understanding mission as “the mother of theology.” 25 Against

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Western Christendom, the reality of World Christianity requires a theology of mission to become the mother of theology in a genuine, different, and new way. The Postcolonial Wave: Emancipation and Mission in a Global Context In a post–Christian era, some pundits view Christian mission as cultural imperialism and religious bigotry. In China for instance, there is a national resurgence of the Christian religion. All the while there is also an ambivalent attitude toward Western Christianity and Western civilization. China has endured painful humiliation at the hands of Western imperialists (including Japan) from the times of the Opium War (1839– 1842, 1856–1860) until the Communist China was found in 1949. During the first Opium War, Karl Friedrich Augustus Gützlaff (1803–1851) was working as a translator and a negotiator for the British commander-inchief. He was accused of being involved in “the communication of reports from the invaders’ Chinese spies.” Drawing up plans for a victorious advance on Nanjing, he saw a British victory as “a decisive opening for the Christianizing of China.” 26 On the other hand, China has desired to learn from Western modernization with its technological advancement and achievements. Mr. Den Xiao Ping’s open door policy, inaugurated in 1978, is well expressed in his often quoted remark: “Who cares whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice!” Following China’s open door policy, the phenomenal growth of the Chinese Christian population has made China “the largest Christian community in Asia.” 27 Here the China Christian church serves as a unifying and inclusive force in Chinese society, even though its prophetic mission is not overt. The term World Christianity implies a variety of indigenous expressions of Christianity that are not rooted in a European Enlightenment framework. Colonial annexation and subjugation expatriated native and indigenous cultures and languages under Christendom. However, in the emergence of World Christianity, indigenizing the faith calls for the decolonization of Western Christianity and theology. Here, a post-Western Christianity comes to light. An inculturated or indigenous Christianity anticipates an emancipated society. The metaphor of “taking off one’s shoes” in approaching the cultural–religious place of the other because it is a holy place shows a new appreciation of others.28 The indigenization of Christianity is a controversial field in both Catholic and Protestant churches. Christ is seen in a different cultural robe. This new expression is obvious in churches with a short history. The Christian religion is culturally translatable into varying contexts. In this translation, traditional and popular religious concerns and belief systems resurge and persist with strength. The emergence

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of World Christianity is characterized as “traditionalist, orthodox, and supernatural.” 29 The Pentecostal–Charismatic revival movement is an indicator of this trend. Proponents of World Christianity argue that it is interpreted through a plurality of models of inculturation in terms of various local idioms and practices. Herein we perceive that biblical exegesis and confessional formulation are left behind. If the interpretive principle of Scripture and confessional expression is replaced by the principle of inculturation or indigenization, it is hard to conceptualize the dynamic power of the gospel and the eschatological and open-ended character of the community of faith. It is polemical to talk of the existence of Christianity without biblical exegesis or confessional expressions and symbols.30 For the indigenous discovery of the gospel, priority must be given to the indigenous response and local appropriation by critically uncovering the missionary–colonial gospel implanted in a previous era. An issue here is an articulation of the indigenous discovery of the Christian religion rather than following the Western missionary discovery of indigenous societies. The translatability of Scripture into different languages and the indigenous naming of God in different religious contexts become a watershed for recognizing the indigenous contribution to the inculturation of the Christian religion in a different time and place.31 Classically, Alopen’s mission in Tang China, Francis Xavier in Japan, Robert de Nobili in India, and Matteo Ricci in sixteenth-century China indicate important lessons for present-day theological debate and the construction of God’s mission in regard to inculturation. The Jesuit missionary, Alexandre de Rhodes (1593–1660) mission in Vietnam is appreciated as one that finds the vernacular expression of the Bible and catechism to be indispensable for constructing a Christian theology of mission.32 On the other hand, liberation-oriented theologies have begun to realize how important a role human religiosity or spirituality plays in shaping congregational life and mission and affecting issues of the public sphere. The project of emancipation is brought together with the people’s religious and spiritual life. The issue of spirituality coupled with emancipation has little to do with the bourgeois sense of individualistic wellness training. Ecology as the science and art of interaction coupled with the sociopolitical significance of spirituality reframes a new paradigm of liberation theology.33 Liberation theology’s contribution is to identify social and public locations in terms of power and dominion relations. By sharing an interest in liberation, postcolonial theology attempts to transcend the consequence of colonialism by moving beyond the colonial or neo-colonial forms of global domination. Thus, postcolonialism retains a discourse of resistance, calling into question cultural and discursive domination. Given this fact, postcolonial theology shares the following critical concerns of liberation theology: (1) a critique of oppressive powers of state; (2) a critique of the relationship between Church and state; and (3) a

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critique of the way institutionalized structures internalize and colonize the poor and oppressed.34 A postcolonial hermeneutic reveals that the Bible is imbued with an oppressive and hierarchical–patriarchal structure based on dominion and disenfranchisement. The British civilizing mission is denounced, as is the North American mission of democratization. Such mission by empire amounts to the colonizer’s mimicry of the New World.35 Postcolonial theologians take issue with the empire in presentday globalization that produces postcolonial hybridity. In this hybridity, postcolonial theologians recognize great potential for resistance. In the Asian context, people’s spirituality-oriented liberation theology bolsters an intercultural and interreligious approach to the whole life. Thus it creates strength for resistance against the violence of institutionalized structures and for the promotion of peace among people of different faiths. Aloysius Pieris, a Sri Lankan theologian, affirms that the poor people of Asia are particularly religious. When poverty and religiosity come together, both become liberative. Pieris refers to this as the particularity of Asian liberation theology, distinguishing his theology from the liberation theology of Latin America.36 However, Pieris’ remarks must be refurbished when speaking of how the Word of God relates to Asian religious classics and the art of interpretation that has shaped and inf luenced the spiritual lives of ordinary people at the grass roots level. The Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) in a plenary assembly in Taiwan states: “To preach the Gospel in Asia today we must make the message and life of Christ truly incarnate in the minds and lives of our peoples. The primary focus of our task of evangelization then, at this time in our history, is the building up of a truly local church.” 37 In proposing a new way of becoming Church in Asia, the FABC in Bandung states that the Church in Asia must be: (1) a communion of communities with emphasis on the brotherhood and sisterhood of the people of God; (2) a participatory Church in recognition of the universal gift of the Spirit among all the faithful; (3) a Church witnessing to the risen Lord as it engages in dialog with people of other faiths toward the integral liberation of all; and (4) a Church in service to a prophetic sign of the mystery of the coming kingdom of God.38 From the transnational–feminist perspective, Kwok Pui-lan takes issue with Asian liberation theologians such as Pieris, challenging his characterization of poverty and religious diversity as the essential features of Asian liberation theology. Many Asian theologians have subsequently followed this perspective.39 Early on, in the late 1970s, Asian feminist theologians proposed that the distinctive mark of Asian feminist methodology was the utilization of Asian religiocultural resources such as folklore, stories, legends, songs, and the people’s popular religions. Appropriating Wong’s critical remarks, Kwok critiques the search in the past as “a self- Orientalizing exercise.” “This emphasis on the ‘Asian-ness’ of doing theology in Asia is echoed by what postcolonial discussion calls a ‘fictional’ return (of the

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colonized) to one’s indigenous history and culture.” 40 Counter to Asian liberation theology, Kwok argues that the search for the religious–cultural legacy must be investigated “as a process to suture a broken historical and cultural memory that has been repressed and disrupted by colonialism.” 41 She immediately employs a postcolonial lens to interpret the Bible and develops an intercultural feminist framework.42 In her current project, Off the Menu, a postcolonial feminist imagination is immersed in the postmodern theory of Empire and globalization as represented by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. “Empire manages hybrid identities, f lexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command.” 43 Siding with proponents of Empire in the area of globalization, a postcolonial framework of an Asian feminist theology is transformed into a transnational, global, feminist theology representing the Asian Pacific Rim countries. Globalization and transnationalism provide the Asian or the Asian–American feminist with fresh conceptual frameworks for postcolonial critical reason. The notion of transnational feminist theologies in the Asian Pacific attempts to “probe the perimeters and chart the issues of globalization.” Asian feminist theologians analyze economic and social formation in the guise of “the hidden dowry of globalization.” 44 In the name of the metadiscourse of transnationalism and the empire of globalization, Asian feminists show up as transnational globalists as if privileged to exist out of the colonized life world under global capital dominion and the Western knowledge–power system. Their business is to combat critique and attack by denouncing religious classics as retaining a patriarchal legacy. Thus, in the course of a constant transnational f low of global capital, the religious–cultural life world is being reified and colonized. Critical reason, human language, and knowledge are being shaped and conditioned in this new context. In a process of capital colonization, a critical and creative retrieval of Asian religious classics, hermeneutically refurbished and filtered, belongs to the important task of a missiology of God’s word-event. Unlike the Asian feminist approach, interpretive engagement with religious classics can be used for the sake of a counter memory and critique when evaluating the limitations of Western rationality and global civilization. Likewise, it can further a theology of interculturation and a praxis of emancipation. The coming of World Christianity raises the issue of how to inculturate and emancipate the gospel from the global North. This becomes an issue for those who are burdened and on the underside of universal globalization in history. In the period of a post-Christian West it is certain that skepticism is cast at the nature, outcome, and implications of the current worldwide resurgence of the Christian religion in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The complex situation that we have described makes clear and necessary the important project of articulating and constructing a public theology of God’s mission as word event in a more global and multicultural configuration.

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Christian Mission in Face of Economic Globalization “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Cor 1: 20). This word of the Apostle Paul captures our global economic crisis and the situation of global Christianity. As can be seen in the 2008 financial disaster, the poor suffer the most during an economic crisis. The “financial crisis” denotes a crisis of the whole system and paradigm—not just of global capitalism; it involves the whole framework of Western modernity and civilization. Conversion must happen for the sake of a move from a death–creating system toward a life-giving new civilization.45 After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Max Weber’s critique of socialist bureaucracy retains its justification in our global context. According to Weber, it is not the dictatorship of the worker, but that of the official which is on the march.46 Weber’s paradigm of the “disenchantment of the world” diagnoses the process of deidealization coupled with scientific and technological rationality, which dethrones a traditional view of value systems in the public arena. In the era of rationalism, however, Weber argues that many old gods, with whom we are now disenchanted, assume the form of impersonal forces. Polytheism returns in a disenchanted sense, and no science is absolutely free from presupposition. No resistance is voiced toward a polytheism of values because it is not true to say that “from good comes only good; but from evil only evil follows.” 47 One cannot anticipate the future; perspective on the future is not transparent. Currently economic globalization has surfaced as the only viable option in the world economic system. The capitalist economy is driven by growth and profit. It is the very nature of capital to invest in order to get a return higher than the costs of resources and labor. Herein we see a rationalization to get nature’s resources for free and to drive down the wages for labor as much as possible. Driven to get more profit, capitalism is inclined to destroy the fountains of wealth; nature, and working people. In addition, the owners of capital create a bubble in the financial markets by various kinds of speculation in order to drive up the desire for profit through a so-called Casino Capitalism. The relations of production now include all the fundamental relations between men, women, and the environment. Capital refers to a specific type of production relationship between people and the environment. This relationship is real and contradictory in terms of accumulation and competition. The socialization of labor by capital makes social–cultural formation something alien, and pregiven to human life. Social formation confronts people in the form of capital, so that human labor is subsumed under the dominion of capital as a whole—dominion of the capitalist mode of production.48 In this late phase of capitalism where art, teaching, and scientific research are generally commercialized, the irrationality of late capitalism threatens the existing form of society, the Western form of technically instrumentalized rationality, and human civilization as a whole.

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In support of this principle of capital fetishism on a global scale, neoliberal tenets and experiments have become a major world religion which has formidable doctrines and institutions. For the neo-liberal, the market is wise and good—such as “the invisible hand” (Adam Smith). According to this neo-liberal doctrine people are unequal by nature. However, the well born, best educated will offer contributions that will eventually benefit everyone. This is a social–political version of Darwin’s survival of the fittest. Here, privatization is a perfect virtue that brings in a major economic transformation. Public or natural monopolies are designed to offer the best possible service at the lowest possible cost to the consumer. But neoliberals define anything public as inefficient. When a natural monopoly is privatized, the new capitalist owners tend to impose monopoly prices on the public. The whole point of privatization is simply to transfer wealth from the public purse to private hands. The product of decades of work by thousands of people is surrendered to a tiny minority of large investors. Capitalism in the social Darwinist sense is detrimental to the social welfare system. Competition is the true motor of globalization, and victory in the competition is the criterion of efficiency. The growth of poverty and inequality also becomes a threat in rich countries. Social disparities pose complex questions about human society. Enormous social challenges impend on it: education and health care, the anomies of ethical value, and the social diseases of a rich society such as alcohol and drug abuse. It is not surprising that we face problems of incompetence and irresponsibility among those of the underclass in North American society. Capital is remunerated to the detriment of labor and wealth, and moves from the bottom of society to the top. “The Politics of Rich and Poor” 49 in North America is elaborated by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the principal think-tank of the former Reagan administration which was an important force in the administration of President George W. Bush. The politics of the rich and poor demonstrate the remarkable contrast between the rich and the poor in the 1980s.50 In the globalizing phase of late capitalism neo-liberals argue, following in the spirit of polytheism, for global capitalism. They propose to remove state intervention and introduce a free market economic system through controlling the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the Washington Consensus, and so on. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the decline of Marxist ideology of imperialism. In its place a new idea of Empire surfaced. This is the Empire of polytheism based on the logic of a pure market economy for the sake of maximizing profit. Imperialism in the socialist sense can be defined as a stage in the development of the world economy. The concentration of production and capital has created monopolies that play a central role in the world economic system. As monopoly capital becomes the major form of capital, capital export becomes an outstanding feature in economic relations at the international level. The superpowers, although rivals, collaborate for

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their economic interests through multinational economic corporations and international systems. The centralized countries monopolize peripheral countries by controlling capital investments and divide unoccupied territories of the world into their satellites. This model is foundational for the Marxist idea of imperialism as applied to the political and economic situation after the two world wars.51 However, in the era of Empire, the nation-state retreats and in its place the international economic system (codified by the IMF and the World Bank that are associated with institutions such as the Trilateral Commission and the G-8 countries, among others) appears to be in command and control. The rationality of the world market manifests itself as an ideology of mystification or as a reified rationality. This is in fact a combination of contradictions between the partial rationality of capitalist law and the relative irrationality of the total process.52 The concept of rational bureaucracy, which is played out against the socialist concept of the class struggle, manifests itself now as irrational in global capitalism. This irrationality is ironically justified by Weber as the very embodiment of rationality. “The end of ideologies” changed into the ideology of polytheism, pluralism, and relativism in personal and social values. Hereby regression to superstition, spiritual occultism, and misanthropy accompany globalizing rationality in the phase of late capitalism.53 The ideology of globalization in favor of economic growth is coupled with efficiency and competition and stand in contrast to ecological sustainability, democracy, and social justice. Thus capital devours human beings as well as the environment.54 Global capitalism has taken the form of a fetishism of economic growth. As such it is stuck in a state of inhumanity and self-destruction. God’s Mission and Economic Justice Given this global economic situation, it is of central importance to relate the theology of God’s mission to economic justice in a global context. In the face of global economic injustice, much has been said about God’s mission. Yet there has been an inadequate connection to global economic justice in the form of alternatives. God’s mission needs to be reformulated and communicated in terms of the gospel, which favors economic justice. The God who forgives is the One who demands justice. To follow the Word of God in a righteous way is to be faithful to God’s mission that cares for the poor. Christian mission, in solidarity with liberation,55 takes into account sociocritical analysis in cultural–economic life relations. The model of development has been criticized as a one-way street. According to this model, the First and Second Worlds contribute to the solution of poverty in the Third World by maintaining the relationship of donor (Western First and Second Worlds) and recipient (Third World). In Populorum Progressio 76 (1967) Pope Paul VI stated that development

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was the new name for peace. The underdeveloped nations are expected to be successful in the race toward welfare with the help of the developed countries. However, this model of development resulted in benefiting a small number of privileged elites. This reality reveals that poverty in the Third World has to do with the structural relationships of global capitalism. At the Geneva Church and Society Conference (1966) and at the Uppsala WCC Assembly (1968), attention was given to the relationship between world economic and social development. Liberation theology in Latin America began to take issue with domination and dependence in terms of development and underdevelopment. Their message was that the socioeconomic root cause of poverty and injustice should be addressed and removed at the structural level. In the statement of the Uppsala Assembly we read, “We heard the cry of those who long for peace; of the hungry and exploited who demand bread and justice; of the victims of discrimination who claim human justice; and of the increasing millions who seek for the meaning of life.” 56 In his ref lection on the Uppsala Conference of the World Council of Churches (1968), Helmut Gollwitzer argues that the catholicity of the church is solidarity with humankind, the Lord’s Supper is the solidarity of the fellowship, mission is solidarity with non-Christians, and repentance is solidarity in colonial guilt. Here a critical analysis of the world economy, in light of rich Christians and poor Lazarus (Luke 16: 19–31), is undertaken to express the political consequences of the gospel in today’s global economic context.57 Similarly, in the Conferences of Latin American Bishops (CELAM) (Medellín, 1968), Colombia, and at Puebla, Mexico, liberation theologians began to articulate the significance of the poor for Christian theology and its practical mission. They contributed to the field of sociopolitical liberation, pedagogical liberation (Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed), and the biblical praxis of the base Christian communities. In the third conference of Latin American bishops (1978), Gustavo Gutiérrez introduced a call for the preferential option for the poor in which the church for the poor must become the poor church. Gutiérrez was present at Medellin as a theological advisor and shortly thereafter he published his groundbreaking work A Theology of Liberation (1971).58 He aptly defines his theology as a critical ref lection on Christian praxis in light of God’s Word. At Puebla, the phrase “preferential option for the poor” was coined in dealing with God’s attention to the poor.59 In these terms the poor gain a new hermeneutical privilege. The poor are not merely the object of mission, but bearers of God’s mission. “. . . We affirm the need for conversion on the part of the whole Church to a preferential option for the poor, an option aimed at their integral liberation . . . This will serve as a starting point for seeking out effective channels to implement our option in our evangelizing work in Latin America’s present and future.” 60

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Liberation theology articulates its mission by taking seriously the human rights of the poor in terms of discerning the signs of the times. Christian mission should be attentive to the voice of the voiceless through which God continually speaks to us. “To know God is to do justice.” 61 The mission of the church involves self-repentance by criticizing the prevailing system of sacralizing the oppressive structures to which the church is tied. Prophetic denunciation is directed against “every dehumanizing situation that is contrary to fellowship, justice, and liberty.” 62 This denunciation is connected with the annunciation of the gospel: “the love of the Father which calls all persons in Christ and through the action of the spirit to union among themselves and communion with him.” 63 Evangelization as invitation to God’s Trinitarian fellowship in love and justice cannot be properly implemented when it disengages its conscienticizing and politicizing function. Christian mission, in expectation of God’s kingdom, involves a challenge to the reality of institutionalized violence associated with institutionalized hypocrisy.64 In the Bangkok Assembly (1973) terms such as salvation were translated as liberation, fellowship, and solidarity. Here, mission is depicted in terms of (1) economic justice against exploitation; (2) human dignity against oppression; (3) solidarity against alienation; and (4) hope against despair in personal life.65 At the meeting of the World Conferences on Mission and Evangelism in Melbourne, Australia (1980), the poor occupied the central place as the missiological principle in terms of God’s reign. Under the theme “Your Kingdom Come,” mission was understood as being conscious that God’s kingdom was concerned with liberation, justice, fullness, freedom, health, and life. This mission, centered on the kingdom of God that Jesus Christ proclaimed, stands for the poor no matter how they may be identified.66 The church’s mission enters into a new evangelization that consists of conscienticizing evangelization. This is a form of service and commitment to the poor. This conscienticizing evangelization of the oppressed has to do with the prophetic stance of the church’s denunciation of every dehumanizing situation and the annunciation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the radical Liberator from all misery, all alienation, and all oppression.67 At Lausanne I (1974) evangelicals such as Samuel Escobar, a Peruvian, argued against the evangelistic reduction of the Christian mission to spirituality without social discipleship. The whole gospel of Jesus Christ is accentuated to avoid a cheapened tendency of evangelism. Escobar is keenly aware of the danger of an evangelicalism that presents the saving work of Jesus Christ without consequent ethical demands. “A spirituality without discipleship in the daily social, economic, and political aspects of life is religiosity and not Christianity.” 68 After the Lausanne movement of 1974, evangelicals have represented a growing response to the challenge of poverty and injustice. Emphasis is placed on the primary direction of Christian mission toward the poor. Globalization has had a sweeping effect on Latin America. Escobar

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critique is that missionaries are encouraged to indulge in making use of the globalization process; this missionary work is compared to the missionaries of previous ages who benefited by the cultural and technological factors of their time. Technical rationality provides an advantage, but it is also instrumental in dehumanizing and colonizing human life. A warning is expressed toward a missionary enthusiasm of efficiency without effectiveness.69 God’s Mission and Liberation Project: Dependency Theory and Late Capitalism In the face of this economic situation of globalization, dependency theory regains a renewed importance in Latin America today. The sweeping effect of globalization submits the dependency/independency viewpoint to the logic of the world market. Market logic brings development through dependency in order to prevail. Even before Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, General Pinochet in Chile established his neoliberal economic program based on the theory of Milton Friedman. Neoliberalism legitimizes the submission of dependency on the regulating policy of the world market for the sake of efficiency and competitiveness. From the 1970s onward, the dependency viewpoint was marginalized and excluded from public opinion. In the process of globalization and its ideological justification dependency theory has again acquired significance.70 According to the theory of dependence, the First World as a great archipelago can be found everywhere, but it is surrounded by a periphery zone that cannot be fully integrated economically. The nation–state mainly works to facilitate and promote the f low of goods and capital through globalization, so that the state becomes a nation–state of competitiveness. In other words, it becomes a political representative of the total market. Postcolonialists see the emergence of empire in the economic globalization of late capitalism, whose rule incorporates the entire global realm. As Hardt and Negri argue, “Empire manages hybrid identities, f lexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command. The distinct national colors of the imperialist map of the world have merged and blended in the imperial global rainbow.” 71 In this light, globalization is taken as a new paradigm of power decoding economic postmodernization. The theory of empire demonstrates an analysis of the power manifest in transnational corporate capitalism. It echoes in the postcolonial theologians who advocate for politics of difference and hybridity in protest of the essentialism of modern rationality and sovereignty. Nevertheless, postcolonialists are not skillful in analyzing the capitalist mode of production on a global scale when it comes to neo-colonialism and unequal exchange.72 As foreseen in Weber’s paradigm of the disenchantment of the world, a technological rationalization propels the process of deideologization. In a hybrid combination of organization and anarchy,

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exchange value and capitalist competition become more and more tense. An ideology of technological rationalism in globalization, as a specific example of reification, has the function of the mystifying concealment of social conf lict and contradiction. In the process of globalization a life world is violated, reified, and colonized by political power, capital dominion, and mass media. In the Legitimation Crisis Habermas attempts to analyze the crisis of late capitalism. An economic subsystem (capital) and a political administrative system (the state) provide the state with a steering performance to make a crisis situation of late capitalism look legitimate. At the economic level crisis occurs; at the political administrative level a rationality crisis occurs. All the while a legitimation and motivation crisis occurs on the sociocultural level.73 Ideology serves to hide or legitimate the underlying structure of a social organization. The state carries the burdens of social integration, assuming social welfare performances at the sociocultural level. The crisis-ridden course of economic growth can be balanced through governmental intervention into the market world. Thus economic progress is controlled through the medium of state power. The economy is steered via the money medium.74 Starting from a model with two steering media—money and power— the institutionalization of power is more compelling than that of money; consequently a legitimation of political power is needed. In fact, “late capitalism makes use in its own way of the relative uncoupling of system and life world.” 75 Against a Marxian economic reductionism, Habermas contends that the economy depends on being supplemented by an administrative system that is singled out through the medium of political power. It is necessary to approach the genesis of reification in the phase of late capitalism in terms of an interplay between system and interaction. Modernity’s two great media—money and power—lead the economy and the administrative power of the state to instrumental–strategic action which does structural violence by colonizing the communicative moral reasoning and action of the life world. Habermas distinguishes steering media (separated out of the life world) from the generalized forms of communication (which remain tied to life world contexts). The public media strengthens the efficacy of social control and makes it hierarchical. Instead of a false consciousness, we have a fragmented consciousness surrounded by the mechanism of reification. This forms a condition for a colonization of the life world.76 Habermas’ theory of life world and system gives an inspiration for a political public theology. In light of this public theology, the church is viewed as a community of communication and interpretation. Some scholars attempt to localize a political public theology between discourse ethics and hermeneutical reconstruction. It is argued that issues of justice and conceptions of goodness are publicly discussed in churches as communities of interpretation.77 But first of all, a question must be raised on which side the church stands: the life world or the system. The church as a public faith community

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must call for criticizing, testing, and correcting religious institutionalized discourse by analyzing the interdependence between religious knowledge and religious hierarchical power. This sociocritical function belongs to a prophetic side of God’s mission. The economic phase of globalization demonstrates social irrationality and the hybrid necessity of market anarchy and state interventionism. This is the central hallmark of late capitalism that denotes the crisis of capitalist production relations.78 In interpreting the socioeconomic reality of Latin America, the theory of dependency provides key elements for analyzing and understanding the underdevelopment of Latin America. Franz Hinkelammert estimates that the socialist theory of imperialism deals with the problem of imperialism merely from the standpoint of the center countries. What is needed in Latin America is an analysis of the reality of underdevelopment from the perspective of the dependent periphery. Given this fact, Liberation theologians appropriate the theory of dependency in order to reformulate the theory of liberation from imperialism. The classical theory of imperialism, according to Hinkelammert, analyzes the expansive strength of capitalism from the standpoint of the centers of the capitalist world; capitalism is essentially developmentalism and industrialization. However, the capitalist situation in underdeveloped countries is not analyzed. There capitalism produces only stagnation.79 The theory of dependency was proposed convincingly by Andre G. Frank, whose economic model was based on the metropolis–satellite structure of the capitalist system. This model gives an account of a particular feature of capitalist underdevelopment in Latin America.80 His mentor was Paul Baran. In Baran’s book, The Political Economy of Growth (1957),81 he denounces monopoly capital as a cause that deepens the unequal development between the developed countries and underdeveloped countries. Baran’s work continually emphasizes that the economic reality of underdeveloped countries should be investigated from its own standpoint. The key concept for Baran’s analysis of monopoly capitalism is an economic surplus that is not identical to profits. In Monopoly Capital (1968), Baran and Sweezy together accept the Marxist thesis that “imperialism is the monopoly of capitalism.” 82 They attempt to analyze “the generation and absorption of the surplus under conditions of monopoly capitalism” 83 to explain underdevelopment in the Third World. A dependency model is built on the hierarchy between monopolies and colonies. Frank in his study of underdevelopment in Latin America is in agreement with Baran, arguing that “it is capitalism, both world and national, which produced underdevelopment in the past” and still in the present.84 Following Baran and Sweezy’s economic model of monopoly capital, Frank articulates and features an analysis of the monopolistic nature of the structure of capitalism. This is what world capitalism imposes as its exploitative structure and development by fully integrating the economy of satellite nations into the world capitalist system and then converting

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them into colonial satellites of the world capitalist metropolis. The colonial and national capital with its export sector becomes a satellite of the metropolis of the world economic system. Therefore, a whole chain of constellations between the metropolis and the satellites expands the system of the metropolitan center even to the farthest outposts of the Latin American countryside so that even the satellites are subject to the metropolitan center. The geographic expansion of the European economy eliminates other world systems and absorbs the remaining minisystems. The independence of Latin American countries eliminated Spain’s semiperipheral role, but it did not change Spain’s peripheral status. The dependent role of the periphery became a central issue after the Second World War in the wake of Bandung, decolonization, and Third Worldism.85 Therefore, underdevelopment is understood essentially as the product of the historical process and the development of capitalism. The emergence of underdevelopment has arisen out of a metropolis–satellite structure that reveals the polarization of the system of world capitalism. The contradiction between the metropolitan center–peripheral satellites of global capitalism entails a dangerous consequence, causing the people in the periphery to pay the price of suffering and disaster. The combination of these contradictions generates economic development in the metropolis and conversely reinforces structural underdevelopment in the periphery. Insofar as this center–peripheral relationship is the key to underdevelopment, lower wages are the result of an uneven development of the capitalist mode of production. This economic reality comes from the ramifications of underdevelopment. Unequal exchange can be found in the problem of different social structures of the underdeveloped countries. The disadvantageous conditions for the accumulation of capital in underdeveloped countries are grounded in social causes that were put into effect and solidified in the aftermath of imperialism. Thus, Frank is right in stating that the development of capitalism produces the juxtaposition of overdevelopment in the metropolitan countries and underdevelopment in the colonies and semicolonies. Nevertheless, this economic difference could be better explained by the specific combination of precapitalist, semicapitalist, and capitalist relations of production in the social structure of peripheral countries. This difference is more than the mere economic dependence of the periphery upon the metropolis countries.86 In terms of its expansion and development on a world scale the capitalist system continues and is visible everywhere at all times and in all places. The problem lies with the dependency of the satellites upon the external power of the metropolis. The semicolonies become capitalist countries when their production relations are definitively integrated into the capitalist market. However, in such integration it is helpful to not neglect the fact that capitalist relations of production become a socioeconomic reality. Here, labor power takes the form of a commodity, and a conversion of the means of production into capital is compared to the hegemony of

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monopoly capital and the integration of the semi–colonies into the capitalist world market. Neo-colonialism does not bring any change to capitalist relations in the underdeveloped country. Neither does it eliminate unequal exchange between the metropolitan countries and semicolonies. In an age of late capitalism, neo-colonialism rules in the unequal relationship between the metropolitan countries and peripheral countries by intensifying dependence and underdevelopment. Johan Galtung, a European social economist, contributes to the investigation of the center–periphery relation of imperialism with four typological concepts: (a) the center in the center; (b) the periphery in the center; (c) the center in the periphery; and d) the periphery in the periphery. At five levels—communication, cultural, economic, military, and political—the unequal exchanges between the center and periphery reveal the nature of dominance and dependency. Although the periphery in the center is poor and alienated, this group, similar to the rich, benefits from the dependence of the peripheral nations. In the context of underdeveloped countries, Christian evangelization that announces the universality of Christian love does not contradict a preferential option for the poor.87 Evangelization is grounded in the inbreaking reality of God’s Trinitarian-liberating reign into the life history of the poor. Christian mission as participation in God’s liberating mission has been articulated and accentuated from the World conference on Mission and Evangelism in the 1980s onward in the statement: “The triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is a God in mission, the source and sustainer of the church’s mission. The church’s mission cannot but f low from God’s care for the whole creation, unconditional life for all people and concern for unity and fellowship with and along all human beings.” 88 From the Scripture we read the magna carta of the economy of the enough for all, the story of manna (Exod 16). The bread given by God from heaven in the desert is enough for every person for each day. “. . . those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage” (v. 18). This is quoted in Deut 8 in the context of the accumulation of wealth in the seventh century BCE—after the introduction of the property–interest–money economy. God links God’s reign of sharing to the gift of the manna bread “in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word (teaching of just laws and rules) that comes from the mouth of the Lord”—exactly the passage which Jesus quotes against Satan who tempts him to accumulate bread by transforming stones (Matt 4). Accordingly, Jesus prays: “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt 6:11). This is the economy of enough in opposition to the economy of unlimited property accumulated through money mechanisms linked to the idol of Mammon. Jesus’ mission, which is basically seen in his proclamation of Isaiah (Luke 4:17ff ), becomes also obvious in his Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5: 13ff ). Jesus’ identification of his people in light of “the salt of the earth”

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and “the light of the world” is embedded with Jesus’ mission of the coming of God’s kingdom which is to be incarnated in the public sphere. Therefore, God’s new act of liberation and the building up of the marks of God’s kingdom can be regarded as the alternatives to the current society. Jesus’ mission finds its beginning among ochlos–minjung, that is, massa perditionis—the excluded, the impoverished, and the marginalized.89 A church’s diakonia in the economic realm characterizes the church as a serving and critical community that embodies God’s grace of the forgiveness of sin and prophetic justice. It takes issue with whatever causes human poverty and suffering, striving to change and renew the global and local circumstances underlying the generation of poverty and suffering for all creatures. The church’s economic diakonia, engaging in the struggle for justice, peace, and ecological sustainability, promotes solidarity with and transformative recognition of creaturely life. Missio Dei in an Ecumenical Context: Church and the World Missio Dei or God’s mission gains prominence and ecumenism when it comes to evangelization and Christian witness toward social justice, promoting prophetic dialog with people of other faiths, and upholding peace among communities of faiths. Karl Barth, a proponent of missio Dei, has constantly exercised a theological inf luence on the theology of mission, evangelization, and social witness. Barth’s theological concept of missio Dei is a break from an Enlightenment approach to theology. At the Brandenburg Missionary Conference in 1932 Barth articulated mission as an activity of God. His inf luence on missionary thinking became prominent at the Willingen Conference in 1952. God’s Trinitarian history of mission that articulates God the Father sending the Son and the Spirit is foundational for the triune God’s sending of the Church to the world. Willingen’s concept of mission addresses participation in the sending of God because missionary activity comes from God alone.90 The Church is grounded in God’s Trinitarian movement that reaches its apex in the incarnate and crucified Christ. Mission is participation in the movement of God’s love and reconciliation, fighting against the reality of lordless powers. According to Barth, insofar as mission and theology want the works of faith and hope to receive the free grace of God, “they are built upon the solid rock of God’s election.” 91 Within the predestination framework of missio Dei Barth tends to ignore an ecclesial dimension of missio Dei in fellowship with the triune God through Word, the sacrament, and diaconal discipleship. Later Barth catches up with this dimension in his discussion of Christian ministry. In the Chapter 3 we shall have opportunity to deal with his theology of mission in more detail. In his early stage a Barthian notion of missio Dei tends to overemphasize only God’s work in relationship with the world.

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This consequence runs the risk of stepping down the church’s mission in service of God’s reign. Such a consequence of missio Dei paves the way for Hokendijk’s questionable attempt at the humanization of missio Dei, which undermines the locus of ecclesiology from the perspective of God–World–Church. Hokendijk argues: “As soon as we speak of God, we also bring into speech the world as God’s theater stage for his action . . . the world as history is God’s ‘mission field.’ . . . [Church’s] apostolicity (in teaching and in church order) must prove itself in the apostolate. Missio Dei is the compelling summary of the good news that God . . . wills to be a God-for-others. The Church . . . takes place where she becomes the church-for-others . . . . [for] the content of the Missio Dei . . . the term ‘humanization’ has been emphatically brought to prominence as a key word.” 92 Hoekendijk represents a humanistic version of missio Dei. He defines missio Dei as the “Shalom-ization of the whole life,” in which “three horizons of hope (life, justice, and the kingdom of God) will be established.” Missio Dei is called “the messianic way of life” with the characteristic of “a judging and hope-bringing intervention in the course of things.” 93 Overemphasis on God’s work alone puts the theological foci of justification and ecclesiology in a dubious place. The church’s missionary endeavor stands in the way, undermining missio Dei’s direct relation to the world. In God’s reconciled world there is no need for the church’s missionary involvement or contribution. Reconciliation conceptualized without an eschatological “not yet” runs into a secularized gospel message. Humanization is identical with God’s mission. Here a theological implication of the law is undermined for the sake of the universalization and secularization of the subject matter of the gospel. The forgiveness of sin is leveled to become liberation at a social structural level.94 Such a humanitarian notion of missio Dei reached its climax at the 1968 meeting of the WCC at Uppsala, Sweden. Here the church is often critiqued and even ridiculed as a center of power.95 On the Catholic side, a renewal of Trinitarian theology comes from Karl Rahner. There is a missiological point of departure in Rahner’s view of the saving work of God in the mission of the Son and the Spirit. God’s self-communication in a missionary horizon leads to his provocative statement—“The ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the ‘immanent’ Trinity is the ‘economic’ Trinity.” 96 The mystery and freedom of the triune God (the immanent Trinity: God in self ) is reinterpreted as a way of addressing God’s self-expression in missional–salvation history because God wants all people to be saved. In this light the Vatican II “decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church” (Ad Gentes) states that the period between the first and second coming of Jesus Christ is the time of missionary activity. Missionary activity is defined as the manifestation and epiphany of God’s will. “God, through mission, clearly brings to its conclusion the history of salvation.” 97

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Rahner’s rule is accepted by Moltmann to the extent that Moltmann develops his cross-centered form of the Trinity in light of a social doctrine of the Trinity. Moltmann provides a Trinitarian–missional impulse for grounding the meaning of the cross. “The form of the crucified Christ is the Trinity.” 98 In his construction of a Trinitarian theology of the divine passion—the Father’s pain over the death of the Son is the sighing of the Spirit—God’s mission in Trinitarian history is construed in a correlative way: God as the Trinity not only affects the world, but also is in turn affected by the world. In this regard, the traditional distinction between God in self and God for us is redundant, following in the footsteps of Rahner.99 In Moltmann’s proposal of a social doctrine of the Trinity, Christian mission is defined as an invitation to God’s life and future. Missio Dei “is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church.” “The church participates in Christ’s messianic mission and in the creative mission of the Spirit.” 100 The Spirit is the life-giver and called the Spirit of life or the source of life. The goal of missio Dei is the new creation of all things. In the mission of the invitation to God’s life and future, the religions and the cultures of other people will be interpenetrated by the Spirit of hope, open to the future of the world rather than converted or destroyed. Missio Dei means inviting all human beings, both the religious and the nonreligious, to life, to the affirmation of life, and to eternal life in resistance to a “barbarism of death.” 101 Western Trinitarian theology of missio Dei has the strength of applying the Christian doctrine of the Trinity to the God’s loving relationship with the world. A prophetic commitment to social justice and human rights in the public sphere is accentuated in this regard for the sake of the affirmation of life. However, a Jewish self-understanding of God that is grounded in God’s word-event in Torah is an undercurrent. If God is in relationship with people of other cultures and faiths through Trinitarian history, we must take seriously the hermeneutical–religious experience of divine reality for the configuration of God’s mission as God’s word-event. This task also adds an ecological relevance for Christian mission, developing a theology of word-event publicly and interculturally in a wider horizon.

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CH A P T E R

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Seeking God’s Mission as Word-Event in a Wider Horizon

In the previous chapter we discussed a theology of missio Dei in an ecumenical-global context. We have mapped this theology in the discussion of postmodern theory, postcolonial challenge, and economic justice in an era of globalization and World Christianity. Acknowledging the theological contribution of missio Dei, we shall be concerned to seek and refine a theology of God’s mission as word-event in a wider horizon by decreasing the limitation that is discernible in a theological concept of missio Dei in the Trinitarian-predestinarian framework. If a theology of missio Dei remains disengaged from the living, dynamic reality of the God who continues to speak to the church as well as to the world, such a theology remains abstract when dealing with the church’s relationship with Israel, a biblical dimension of evangelization, ecological stewardship, and religious outsiders. A biblical perspective on God’s salvific drama and narrative within the world through the Holy Spirit will facilitate the development of God’s mission as word-event in terms of God’s justifying grace and reconciliation. With the dynamic reality of God’s narrative in mind, we will explore a mission of word-event in connection with a theology of the cross, Christian hope, and Trinitarian eschatology. Christian Mission and God’s Narrative in the World Within the Trinitarian concept of missio Dei, there is a need to articulate the relationship of the Christian self-understanding of the Trinity with regard to the God of Israel. This calls for addressing and reconstructing a concept of missio Dei in connection to the proper place of Israel’s experience that emphasizes the God who speaks through the Torah and the prophets. Furthermore, a Western discussion of missio Dei is not adequate to integrate social, cultural, and existential diversity when we review God’s narrative and activity in a world inhabited by many cultures and many religions. In the history of God’s narrative, human participation is

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not puppet like, but is analogically correlative—as created co-worker— with God’s manifestation and direction in religious-cultural worlds. A hermeneutical endeavor to develop a theology of God’s narrative as mission is of special significance when it comes to World Christianity in the midst of cultural (or intercultural) indigenization. Theological education for Christian mission needs to be reappraised. Economic justice and ecological ethics are centrally important in a constructive proposal of the mission of God’s narrative in an era of a global crisis in the capital system and the Western paradigm of modernity. This complex situation demands the development of a narrative mission of word-event in light of God who is the Subject of speaking to reorientation for us. In light of God’s missionary communication, which articulates God’s sending of both the Son and the Spirit, mission is an exploration of God’s historical-missional activity. It appreciates the engagement of human experience with the universality of the gospel as it expects the coming of God. A theology of mission is concerned with ref lecting on the public dimension of God’s narrative in the gospel and specifically articulates the question of how to effectively communicate the gospel in varying contexts. Furthermore, insofar as God is the living Lord who freely speaks in the world to the church, this side of viva vox Dei calls the church to attentively listen to the meaning of the gospel in multiple dimensions coming out of the public sphere in different times and places. Therefore, a theology of mission is not limited to an evangelistic passion for conversion or church planting; rather it takes into account an interdisciplinary study of culture and religion to deepen the meaning of the gospel to be more amenable and relevant to people in non-Christian cultures. The classical doctrine of the missio Dei remains abstract and inadequate when disengaged from a cultural-existential interpretation of God’s narrative in triune communication with the world of other faiths and religions. An investigation of God’s mission in an interdisciplinary way is needed to better understand the life world of culture and religion that shapes and characterizes human language, spiritual experience, and religious belief systems. It is essential to demonstrate a prophetic-public relevance for God’s mission of word-event in a hermeneutical fashion as it pertains to universality of God’s narrative in ecclesial realms as well as in the extra-ecclesial realm. We do not need to reject a postmodern suspicion of the universal grand narrative; rather, it facilitates Christian theology to better consider and address the particular character of the gospel in relation to God’s narrative with Israel. A constructive proposal of a theology of God’s narrative as mission event integrates postmodern insight into the priority of God’s saying over and against what is said and written in a text. A theological reconstruction of God’s mission in this context adopts an ethical concern for the other and utilizes sociological analysis of the interplay between religious knowledge and political legitimation of power systems: to be a

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corrective to the missionary exclusion of the other in the history of colonialism. We shall have an opportunity to discuss God’s narrative as mission in an ethical configuration in more detail in Chapter 4, which regards Christian mission in the context of emancipation and inculturation. The narrative of the gospel is articulated in view of the individual within the community of faith. The church as sanctorum communio is a hermeneutical community reading the Scripture together with God’s people. It is a participatory community in which the individual joins the “life together” of word, sacraments, and social diakonia. Life together is based on communio, koinonia, and diakonia. It mirrors the social life of the triune God who is, by nature, relational, missional, and communicative. Faith as a gift of the Holy Spirit engages in pursuit of the mystery of God who is not merely doctrinally fixed and scholastically rationalized. Faith and understanding, seen in a hermeneutical circle, are guided, enriched, and deepened by our engagement with the mystery and freedom of God’s word-event taking place in both ecclesial and extra-ecclesial spheres. A faith journey is being on the way, like Abraham, encountering and blessing religious outsiders. Both the spiritual dimension and the intellectual understanding of the Christian faith are in the service of God’s mission of word-event, speaking to us in every dimension of our lives for the sake of the other. Here a hermeneutic of God’s narrative is in service to understanding and actualizing the reality of the living voice of God. As Paul instructs, the ultimate reality of God transcends human rationality. The particular-universal narrative of the gospel as a first-order subject calls for reading the biblical narrative in connection with our socially embodied life. The propositionalist view of doctrinal truth must be rearticulated, reshaped, and opened up through the process of interpretation as it concerns the subject matter of God’s narrative in communication with the world. The Christian confession as a second-order subject is fully conversant with experience and the interpretation of Scripture in a social-historical sphere and in a trans-cultural location. Confessional theology can be enriched and deepened in engagement with the mission of God’s narrative in the public sphere. Christian evangelization and mission are not reducible to merely a soulsaving business in an individualistic sense. Rather, they involve integrating the emotional-affective as well as the bodily sensual, together with the intellectual-rational. The Christian gospel aims at healing and restoring a person in relationship with the community. God’s narrative as mission in a postmodern and multicultural context emphasizes the Christian gospel and the public relevance of faith to every dimension of life in the social cultural realm. The Holy Spirit accompanies and sustains our life journey. Faith, experiential wisdom, and understanding are hermeneutically integrated in our discussion of God’s mission as word-event. A constructive proposal of a mission of God’s narrative in a wider spectrum aims at articulating and embodying the never-changing, living voice of glad tidings coming from the mission of the triune God. Such a reframing and

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reconstructing of missiology of word event renders the Christian narrative of God’s grace in Christ more convincing and reliable to the public sphere, taking into account the postmodern challenge and an emerging era of world Christianity. Christian Mission in Service to God’s Narrative Drama in the World Christian mission is mandated for service in God’s salvific drama. It follows the example of Christ and the apostolic mission under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Mission is inseparably bound up with history and eschatology. The gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations (Mark 13:10), then the end will come (Matt 24:14). The time of Christian mission began with Pentecost and ends with the parousia of Christ. Mission is by nature eschatologically oriented. Christian mission in an eschatological contour serves God’s Trinitarian drama in the world. The basic principle of mission is derived from God’s own mission. Jesus Christ, as the mirror or icon of God’s heart, points to the parable of God’s kingdom that is God’s self-communication with humanity. God’s own mission is known through God’s narrative in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit for all. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ we perceive the line and direction of God’s word as mission for the world. In fact, revelation is a self-interpretation of God’s identity as the triune God. The incarnation offers the church a model for the missionary task. Christ identified himself with the people of his time without ever giving up his own identity. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is intended to witness to Jesus Christ as the person of the past, the present, and the future. The Holy Spirit opens people up to faith in Christ. In the spectrum of the divine-human drama of God’s narrative in the biblical context, organizing themes such as the kingdom of God, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the Great Commission provide a holistic and integrative orientation to a theology of mission. In the evangelistic circle the organizing theme is God’s salvation and human estrangement from God, which a theology of mission addresses for the sake of conversion. In the ecumenical circle, themes such as justice, liberation, or prophetic dialogue with people of other faiths are chosen for the organizing theme. However, an integrative view of God’s mission of word-event embraces evangelization, promotes prophetic diakonia, recognizes people of other faiths, and addresses structures of institutionalized violence. God mandates that the church convey God’s salvific drama that takes place in Christ under the guidance of the Spirit. Mission is demonstrated in the life of church as the daily response to being called and being sent. The church begins to be missionary through the universality of the gospel

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it proclaims. The coming together of the church for worship is by nature a missionary activity. Mission is an ecclesiological matter because mission is bound up with the essence of the church nourished by the Word and guided by the Holy Spirit. At the core of salvation and liberation lie the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s eternal, living Word. When it comes to the atonement of sins and redemption from slavery to sin, death, and the powers of corruption, Jesus Christ is central. Each people will praise God in their own language and their own cultural style. Each people will bring before God the riches of their own heritage (Rev 21:22–26). The gospel is by nature particularly connected with the history of God’s narrative as a missional event in the covenant with Israel that becomes universally relevant through Jesus Christ. But the implementation of the universality of the gospel leads first to the particularity of God’s narrative drama in the history of Israel. God calls the people of Israel, its prophets, and God’s messengers. God calls Abraham and promises him a great nation. God promises Abraham to make him a blessing to others. In the act of the covenant, God’s mission of word-event in the Hebrew Bible is grounded in the particular-universal nature of God’s love and concern. Thus, through Abraham’s blessing, Ishmael enters. The God of Abraham is the advocate for Hagar and Ishmael. In the Exodus story (12:37–38) Israel is an open community. The whole group is referred to as a mixed multitude—not limited to Abraham’s descendents. Israel is the starting point of God’s salvific drama. Strangers are allowed to enter into the journey of Israel. God’s house is not confined to Israel alone. Foreigners are expected and allowed to come to the temple to worship, “— for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm—when a foreigner comes and prays toward this house” (1 Kings 8:42–43). Concern for the poor and the widow and hospitality for the foreigner are indispensable parts of understanding the prophetic character of God’s narrative and biblical mission. This perspective also articulates a diaconal dimension of biblical mission as remains overt in Leviticus 19:9-18. There is something about gleaning laws and the prohibition of unjust dealings with employees or neighbors (Lev 19). Here we read of God’s diaconal interest.1 In the Hebrew Bible, a diaconal act, which is a basic dimension of the life of God’s people, is originated in God’s liberative option for the poor and the needy, as expressed in Exodus 20:2. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” This perspective penetrates the whole missional-diaconal dimension in the Hebrew Bible. The pre-exilic prophets add their voices in proclaiming a universal thrust for God’s mission. Joel prophesies the outpouring of God’s Spirit on all f lesh ( Joel 2:28). Habakkuk declares that the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea (Hab 2:14). Micah looks to the day when the nations will come to worship God. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears

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into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken” (Micah 4:3f-4). From Isaiah we read the most significant missionary message. God’s servant will be a light for the Gentiles so that all the earth will see God’s salvation (Isa 42:6; 49:6). The mission of the Servant is one of justice for the nations, gentleness, enlightenment, and liberation (Isa 42:1–9). God is interested in the peace of the nations. Jerusalem will be a source of praise among the nations. The salvific drama of God’s narrative in the Hebrew Bible involves the individual and the community of God’s people as it is also inclusive of the non-Israelite. They participate in God’s covenant of peace that is entered into by faith in God as seen in the example of Abraham. The narrative of God’s salvific drama in the Hebrew Bible becomes the backbone for the continuation of God’s drama in the Greek Bible as it further unfolds God’s missional story for the nations through Christ and the Spirit. The Greek Bible witnesses to Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the messianic promise in the Hebrew Bible. In Matthew we read of such continuity: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (5:17). Jesus proclaims in the synagogues the good news, the gospel of the Kingdom of heaven (Matt 4: 23, 9:35); “this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and the end will come” (24:14). Matthew emphasizes that the Kingdom of Heaven means God’s righteousness, justice, and fairness. This is what people should seek (6:33). Seeking righteousness means putting faith into practice in daily life. That is, faith in action, obedience, and commitment to God’s will. The term ekklesia is used in the context of Jesus’ teaching and promise (16:18; 18:17).2 In Matt 23:2 Jesus invites his disciples and the crowd (ochlos) to consider the teaching of the scribes and the Pharisees who sit on Moses’ seat. The scribes and the Pharisees are regarded as the bitter enemies of Jesus. The chair of Moses is a teaching chair in the synagog. According to rabbinic Judaism, “Moses received the Torah from Sinai and delivered it to Joshua, Joshua passed it on to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets passed it on to the men of the Great Synagogue” (Avot. I:1). Matthew’s description of Jesus in this context contends that Jesus affirms the oral teachings of Moses in the synagog. Surprisingly enough, Jesus does not pull his followers out of the Judaism at his time. An indispensable part of Jesus’ mission is learning from the Jewish self-understanding of Torah because God speaks to the church through the Jewish community. This perspective brings us to a new understanding of Jesus.3 The gospel of Jesus cannot be understood and implemented without connection to Jesus’ faithfulness to the Word of God in the Hebrew Bible. In Luke 22:24–27 we read that Jesus is portrayed among the disciples as one who serves. In Mark 10:45 Jesus is introduced as the one who serves and gives

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his life. Diakonia belongs to the essence of Jesus Christ. A concept of mission in the New Testament is embedded with diaconal discipleship. In the Acts of the Apostles, the community is introduced and characterized in light of communion, fellowship, and diakonia (Acts 2:42–47). In Paul’s writings, Christos diakonos is seen as a circumcised diakons (Romans 15:8). Paul’s Christological concept of diakonia reaches its climax in his hymn of Christ’s self-humiliation (Philippians 2:6–11). The missionary vision of Matthew’s gospel is expressed by the wellknown Great Commission (Matt 28:18–20). God’s narrative of the gospel is embodied in the commission. This is the sum of Matthew’s gospel in reference to the Magna Carta of diaconal mission and discipleship (Matt 25:31–46). Following Christ means becoming disciples, baptizing people in the name of the triune God, and participating in God’s life. This mission includes proclamation of Jesus’ message of the kingdom of God and teaching people what Jesus has commanded. The life of discipleship is given the promise of Christ’s presence at the end of the Great Commission: “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” This promise, related to the eschatological Immanuel, characterizes mission and evangelization as Christian discipleship and diakonia for the world. Christian mission underlines, participates in, and promotes Christ’s accompaniment with those who are needy, voiceless, and marginalized. The Christian Mission and a Mandate for Care-taking of Creation In the Great commission of Mark 16:15–16, an exhortation to spread the good news, embraces the entire world and the whole creation. The missional motif to care for creaturely life in creation is likewise visible in Paul’s statement that “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom 8: 21). Church’s mission as service in God’s salvific drama includes the rights of creaturely life because the Christian vision of salvation is of a new heaven and a new earth (Isa 66: 22; Rev 21:1). This is central to God’s narrative as mission for the consummation of the world. Witnessing to ecological justice involving the integrity and dignity of creation is an indispensable part of the Word of God caring for living creatures. A reverence for all forms of life is an indispensable component of the prophetic vision of God’s universal shalom (Isa 11:6). In this light, we pay attention to a different perspective on the Christian anthropology of imago Dei. In Genesis 1:26 man and woman are said to be created in God’s image (zelem) and according to God’s likeness (demut). God made human beings in God’s own image and likeness. God made humans to be God’s representatives in their care-taking stewardship within creation.

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Given this fact, “subdue” (kabash) and “have dominion over” (radah; Gen 1:28) must be qualified by two further verbs: to till (abad; implying to serve) and to keep (shamar; implying to preserve) in Gen 2:15. Serving and preserving the earth is God’s mandate to us in creation. Unfortunately, the giving of dominion in Gen 1:28 associated with God’s image is often taken unilaterally to support the unrestricted exploitation of nature by modern technology and industrial society. The Bible sees humanity as rooted in nature, sharing finitude, creatureliness, and death with all living things, finally returning “to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19ff ). Imago Dei means a copy, analogy, or mirror coming out of the ground and the dust. Humanity was formed “from the dust of the ground” (Gen 2:7). Humanity became a living being through God’s lifegiving breath. The breath of God’s life was given “to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth” (Gen 1:30). God gives “drink to every animal” and “the young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God” (Ps 104: 11, 21). Humans, created in God’s image and according to God’s likeness, are by their essence open to relationship with and participation in God’s life. In this relationship, animals are not excluded so long as they breathe. God’s image is also the basis for a relationship between humans and other living creatures. This image of relationship between God and human beings in the context of Noah’s covenant is expanded to God’s universal covenant relationship with all living creatures and the earth for all future generations. Imago Dei can be seen in the mirror of God’s relationship with divine life (Gen 1:26) as well as in human relationships with each other. It is also expanded into pro-missio Dei to establish God’s universal covenant for universal shalom. “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” (Isa 11: 6ff ). That God rests on the seventh day implies that God invites all creatures into God’s rest (Ex 20:10). Their lives are perceived and respected as God’s own creation. God, the alpha and omega, establishes the covenantal pro-missio with humanity and creation toward God’s final rest within them, in which God’s indwelling does not mean God’s ceasing to be the Creator. In the eschatological assertion that God will be all in all (1 Cor 15: 28), God’s indwelling and rest within humanity and all creatures are already projected in the protological sense of God’s Sabbath, the crown and consummation of creation. God’s menuha (God’s final rest) refers to the fact that God, who speaks the promise, loves in freedom, reconciliation, and indwelling for all creaturely life. God’s covenantal promise contains a sign of grace accompanying, transforming, and guiding it to God’s universal shalom in Jesus Christ who is the image of God. The imago Dei is fulfilled in the second Adam, Jesus Christ. We are to be transformed into the same image (2 Cor 3:18). The

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eschatological view of the new humanity is manifested in Jesus Christ, a life-giving spirit (1 Cor 15:45f ) who is to come again. Given this fact, it is important to view the evolutionary-ecological creative movement in light of God’s word of the covenantal promise that grants dynamic rhythm in the course of an unbroken and never-ceasing cycle: “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, heat and cold, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Gen 8:22). Creatio continua is reassured by God’s promise of the universal covenant. Thus, a scientific theory of evolution becomes an integral part of the biblical narrative that witnesses to the pro-missio Dei in the realm of the creation. What is said in the beginning is a promise, not a conservative ideology to support literal or scientific creationism. Nature and history, creation and evolution cease to be contradictions of each other through God’s act of speech in the promise and freedom that take place in God’s selflimitation and reconciliation by handing over Jesus Christ to the creation that evolves through time. God’s act of speech can be heard and discerned in the evolving created time that is declared to be good in God’s word of creation. God’s word of goodness in the creation guides, penetrates, and transforms an evolutionary process. Seen from this biblical perspective, Darwin offers a theological insight. Out of the struggle of nature, hunger, and death, the highest emerges. It is the production of a higher and more complete existence. All life forms are different from each other and dependent upon each other in a complex, entirely uncontrolled, and fortuitous manner that is generated and produced by the laws of natural selection. “In this view of life,” according to Darwin, “there is grandeur,” . . . “having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one.” “This planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most wonderful and most beautiful have been, and are being evolved.” 4 As can be seen from this statement, Darwin is keenly aware that there is an aesthetic dimension of grandeur in the evolutionary view of life originally breathed by God. At the same time a reality of suffering is perceived in evolutionary life. Darwin affirms the goodness of creation in the evolutionary process from the simplest form of life to the most wonderful and most beautiful. At the same time Darwin does not remain pessimistic about the reality of suffering, victimization and wastefulness. Both pain and suffering are located within a creatures’ right to survive. Creatures continually face new problems and challenges to their existence and survival. God’s grace in the form of a covenant neither violates nor eradicates the life of nature in the evolutionary progress, but prepares and accompanies it through God’s continual creative action and transforms and completes it in the light of God’s coming.5 The reality of evolution is illuminating, dynamic, impregnable, and indestructible in spite of its limitations and shadowy side. A theory of evolution in speaking of God’s goodness in creation can be conscripted into

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the service of God’s mission of word-event. It can be instituted, installed, and ordained for service to the promise and freedom of God’s narrative. In light of divine action in the natural realm, a scientific theory of evolution may become an analogy that points to God’s Word of Sabbath. An analogy of evolution is a way of metaphorically and hermeneutically seeing God’s ongoing creative activity that constantly brings forth what is new in light of divine action. In Ps 19 and Rom 1:20 the human experience of nature is described as the experience of God. Since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and nature have been understood as visible “through the things” God has made. But instead of an identification between nature-experience and God-experience, the Hebrew Bible carefully distinguishes the revelation of the name of the God of Israel (YHWH) from God’s self-manifestation to all people in creation (Elohim). In Ps 8.4, we read: “what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” Here we are aware that the biblical perspective is grounded in a certain and definitive place in which humans live. This perspective argues for God’s life world within which human existence stands in communicative and interpretive relation to other creatures. There is an end of torment for all animals because God will make a covenant with the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground (Hos 2:18). All living creatures, as larva Dei (masks of God in Luther’s term) have a covenantal image and a right to live according to it, open to the divine invitation to new creation. Therefore, imago Dei, both human and nonhuman, can be understood as a covenantal-eschatological image, an open invitation to God’s continual creation. Jesus Christ, the image of God, and his death and resurrection demonstrate a subjective and objective ground for a covenantal-eschatological image of God’s reconciliation with the evolving world. Jesus Christ experiences the shadowy side of evolution—waste, suffering, and death—through his own death and takes them up into the divine life of the new creation through the resurrection. In this light, we are called as co-workers in God’s mission, striving for a better topos of life in expectation of world renewal. This call for progress and betterment is deeply connected to our accompaniment and solidarity with those who are alienated, wasted, and marginalized in evolutionary history and the world. God’s Word as missional event in promise, reconciliation, and freedom refers to the God who cares for God’s minority people and sentient creatures. God is the One who changes and transforms all in all, really and materially in the midst of the reality of lordless powers.6 We observe a reality of lordless powers and violence in the ecological field and in the global financial crisis. A theology of mission must consider the current situation of deep ecological crisis and a global capitalist world-economic system. The resources of the earth are limited. An economic model built on endless growth and expansion of capital needs endless resources for economic exploitation.

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A missiology of word-event takes up the scientific theory of evolution as an analogy that witnesses to the goodness of God the creator, further ethically conceptualizing the theory of evolution in view of God’s universal shalom and Christ’s solidarity with those who are marginalized and victimized in the evolutionary process. God is one-sidedly a God of the lower and not a God of the upper. Indeed, without reservation, God is God of the small and the totally marginal. God is the One who “not only sheds new light on, but materially changes, all things and everything in all things.” 7 A missiological view that is grounded in the living voice of God in the world considers covenant and eschatology in constructing a propheticemancipatory critique of a social ideology tainted by evolution. Not the fittest, but the stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone (Ps 118: 22; Luke 20:17). In this light, a Christian mission of word-event navigates a middle course between the Scylla of nature’s self-apotheosis and the Charybdis of modern desacralized exploitation. Addressing the carefully planned sustainability of the ecological web of life and the profit motive that threatens ecosystems with ruin are central to Christ’s mission.8 Having said this, the San Antonio Conference of the WCC’s Commission on World Mission and Evangelism deserves attention: “Mission in Christ’s way must extend to God’s creation. Because the earth is the Lord’s, the responsibility of the church toward the earth is a crucial part of the church’s mission.” 9 God’s Narrative in Covenant with Israel The Hebrew word Torah is a central biblical concept. Christian theology discusses Torah under the heading of “law,” juxtaposed and contrasted with “gospel.” Such categorization leads easily to a misunderstanding of the biblical concept of Torah. In the context of the Hebrew Bible, the word Torah means instruction given by parents (Prov 1:8, 6:20; cf. 4:1–2, 31:26) to their children to teach the meaning and conduct of life. Torah implies information, advice, instruction, establishing norms, demands, benefits, and encouragement. Torah is also a technical term for priestly instruction to lay people ( Jer 18:18, Ezra 7:26), and designates the speech of the wisdom teachers (Prov 7:2; 13:14), or the prophets (Isa 8:16, 20; 30:9). The oldest reference to written instructions (the Decalog) is found in Hosea, thus in the Northern kingdom of Israel in the eighth century BCE (Hosea 8:12). In Deuteronomy, Torah becomes the comprehensive written will of God (Deut 4:44, 30:10, 31:9), containing narrative (Deut 1:5), and laws (Ps 1: 2–3; 78:1, 5, 10). This Deuteronomic concept is a later designation for Ezra’s law (Neh 8:1) and the entire Pentateuch, but also the prophetically proclaimed eschatological word of God (Isa 2:3; cf. Mi 4:2, Isa 42:4). In this light, Torah contains law/gospel, command/promise, identifying the unity of law and gospel. This perspective articulates the Word of God as the unity of divine word and will.

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Torah begins with the account of creation and early history in which we find instructions for all people (Gen 9:1–7). The covenant and commands of Genesis 9 are directed to all people in the post–Noahide generation. These were acknowledged by the early church in the Apostolic Council (Acts 15:20, 29). A particular aspect of Torah in connection with Israel’s covenant with God is embedded within its universal aspect for all. Torah in Israel’s covenant is transmitted to Moses at Sinai, making reference to the history of the Exodus. The Decalog, or the instructions of Ex 34, is written on stone tablets (Ex 32:16; Deut 9:10; 10:4) after the events at Sinai. Later, Moses writes all of Torah in one sitting (Deut 31:9) before the people enter into West Jordan, and Joshua writes a copy of the law of Moses on stones on Mount Ebal (Deut 27:4, Josh 8:32).10 Christian theology has attempted to distinguish between ceremonial and moral law within the Torah, accentuating the Decalog, the first chapter of Torah. Love of neighbor (Lev 19:18) and the love of strangers (Lev 19:34) become a central message in the Greek Bible (Matt 19:19), radicalizing it into love of the enemy. The Greek Bible’s association with Torah becomes overt especially in St. Paul, who states that Torah is also “holy and just and good” (Rom 7:12). It does not contradict the gospel that St. Paul proclaims. Thus he supports Torah by what he teaches (Rom 3:31) and enables its fulfillment in love (Rom 13:10). Nevertheless, belief in the God of Israel does not require circumcision of Gentiles Christians. The gospel remains effectual and valid in Christian belief in the God of Israel who is fully revealed in Jesus Christ. The gospel of John contains key passages and unique insights into mission. In St. John’s prolog, Jesus Christ is the Word that enlightens everyone (1:9). All people came into being through him (1:3), and the life that the Word has created is the light of all people. This perspective includes a universal dimension of inclusive election. God, who in incarnational mission brings light to the world, is the source of all life. An eschatological tension is echoed in John’s missional framework between the universality of the gospel (14:2) and the particularity of salvation in Jesus Christ (14:16). The history of Jesus in the gospel of John is patterned in reference to Israel’s history with God. Jesus appears in John 6:14 as a prophet like Moses. Jesus is a parallel to Moses rather than his antithesis. Moses retains a categorical reality of connection with Jesus’ accompaniment with the public sinner and tax collectors of both Jewish and non-Jewish background. The One who came “that he might be revealed to Israel” ( John 1:31) will also “confirm the promises given to the patriarchs” (Rom 15:8). John’s statement that “Salvation is from the Jews” ( John 4:22) implies that Torah as God’s Word-mission comes from Israel and goes out to all people. Franz Rosenzweig, a Jewish philosopher, affirms that “no one comes to the Father except though me” ( John 14:6) because the fear of standing alone before God is not unfamiliar to Israel.11 To the degree that Jesus acts and lives according to the Torah of Moses, Jesus proposes teachings that are inf luenced by the Torah. In this light

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St. Paul argues that Jesus was born of a woman and under the law (Torah) (Gal 4:4ff ). Jesus, born of a Jewish woman, is a genuine Jew. Abraham’s faith-righteousness is central to St. Paul and so also to Martin Luther’s teaching of justification by grace through faith in Christ. What is striking is John’s missional framework of integrating Abraham with Jesus Christ. “Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad” (8:56). Jesus introduces himself as the fulfillment and confirmation of Abraham’s faith. The particularity of Jesus Christ in the universal scope of the gospel is enmeshed with the centrality of Abraham in the Christian faith’s understanding of Jesus Christ. This position provides an inter-religious insight into Jewish-Christian dialog. St. Paul shares this view in Rom 4:16–17: “For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendents, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham . . .” In studying the biblical foundation of mission, St. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, occupies a central place with respect to the church’s relationship with Israel. Paul’s theology cannot be understood unless it is seen in connection with the church’s mission. Paul’s missionary thinking and method are evident in his personal confession (Rom 15:15–21). His eschatological vision is manifest in that everything will be subjected to God’s lordship. The key to his missional thinking is God’s justifying and reconciling love in Christ for the world. This is foundational for the church’s mission of God’s word-event toward the world. Describing mission as the activity of God’s Word demonstrates that mission does not fit triumphalist categories. The church’s mission must be in service to God’s Word in action, witnessing to God’s pro-missio to Israel and participating in God’s reign against the reality of lordless powers. God’s own mission is more comprehensive than the church’s mission. Yet the two are connected in light of viva vox evangelii. Insofar as we take seriously the Greek Bible, the church and Israel belong together as two communities of God’s one covenant bound together by the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth. The message of Christ opens for the Gentiles the door to the God of Israel.12 In light of God’s comprehensive covenantal drama the greatest enigma of Paul’s mission is the destiny of Israel, which he examines in Romans 9–11. In the wake of the Nazi Holocaust, the need for reconciliation between the church and Israel is seen to be vital. In the church’s traditional “supersessionist” stance, Christianity is seen as the new “spiritual” Israel that has superseded the old “carnal” Israel. This supercessionism must be corrected in light of God’s Word of covenant with both the church and Israel. Theological and biblical deliberation of the relationship between Jews and Christians has profound implications for a Christian mission of God’s narrative. It also has systematic implications concerning the church’s attitude toward the God of Israel and the Jewish people.13 In a post-Shoah period an indispensable part of characterizing a Christian theology of

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mission as a dialog for renewal is reconciliation, mutual respect, and recognition between Christian and Jewish communities. If indeed God’s narrative as mission refers to the salvific drama of the God of Israel through Torah who is revealed in Christ through the Holy Spirit, a theological-Trinitarian meaning of God’s mission needs to be refurbished and addressed in light of God’s word in covenantal faithfulness to Israel. A necessary part of the new framework in conceptualizing God’s mission as word-event is rethinking the unity of the biblical narrative in light of God’s covenant solidarity between the Jews and Christians. These two communities coexist in the mysterious plan of God. When Israel’s “No” to Jesus Christ is unilaterally viewed in a negative sense, the Jews become written off as God killers, which lead to the spiritualization of St. Paul’s theology of justification and Israel.14 A missiology of the triune God needs a fresh way of understanding how God is actively engaged in the public and corporate dimensions of human history in connection with the history of Israel. According to Paul, God has irrevocably elected Israel to be the people of God. Thus, God’s eternal covenant with Israel needs to be one basis for developing a Christian framework of God’s mission as word-event concerning history and creation. The argument—that God’s promises to the Jews are theologically insignificant for Christians—contradicts the hermeneutical acumen of St. Paul. “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew” (Rom 11:2). Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Gentile Christians are “a wild olive shoot [who] were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree” (Rom 11:17). God’s mystery in which “a hardening has come upon part of Israel” (Rom 11:25) is related to the salvation of Israel. For the sake of Gentile Christians Israel becomes an enemy of God regarding the gospel while Israel is beloved for the sake of their ancestors regarding election. “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom 11:29). It is essential to take seriously the Jewish “No” to Jesus Christ in a positive way, given the election and calling of Israel. A traditional concept of supercessionism must be nullified in this regard. If Paul argues that the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable for the sake of their ancestors (Rom 11:29), the Christological issue needs to be rearticulated and confessed in light of God’s Word as Torah. Jesus publicly asks people “who do you say that I am?” Jesus himself still implies an open question to us. Regarding Peter’s confession, Jesus tells him to keep this confession to himself. In Israel Jesus is barely conceived of as the Messiah. Instead there are expectations of the Messiah “in the sense of the theo-political messianic expectations of Israel.” 15 However, Jesus does not fulfill these hopes and expectations, but integrates them into his messianic mission as the Son of God. Jesus prays the Shema of Israel by affirming it in response to the scribe’s question about the first commandment (Mark 12: 29–31) and blesses the scribe approvingly. “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (v. 34).

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Jesus’ confession of “the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Mark 12: 26f ) is connected with God the Creator. It is certain that Jesus’ ministry is concentrated on “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 10:6) while remaining open to the Gentiles (Mark 7:29). The lost sheep of the house of Israel denotes massa perditionis, those who are the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, and the naked; they are the sick, the crippled, and the possessed; they are the sinner, the tax-collector, the prostitute, the cheat; they are women, the despised, and the meek. Jesus’ mission to the massa perditionis is confirmed in his faithfulness to the Torah and the prophets and in reference to the biblical Jubilee (Lev 25). The image of Jubilee remains fundamental to Luke’s account of the beginning of Jesus’ Galilean ministry (Luke 4:16–21; Isa 58:6, 61:1–2). In a Lucan framework the gospel is outlined as “good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 8:12). Through cruciform discipleship, the disciples’ mission affirms the blessing and victory of the God of Israel in their witness to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for all. To the degree that Jesus became a curse in his crucifixion, he secured the blessing of Abraham for the Gentiles (Gal 3:13–14). The grace of justification and reconciliation fulfills God’s covenant with Israel by confirming it. Theologia crucis is first grounded in the Aqueda (binding of Isaac) in the Hebrew Bible, which cannot be spiritualized in the Greek Bible. Abraham’s accompaniment with Isaac presupposes God’s accompaniment with Jesus Christ on the cross. If Paul argues for the grafting of Gentile Christians “to share the rich root of the olive tree” through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ does not stand in competition with the God of Israel who has the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge, unsearchable, and inscrutable. Thus, Paul provides a space for God’s eschatology that is not merely reduced to Christian eschatology. Christ’s eschatology is conceptualized under the subjection to “God who put all things in subjection under him.” Then God may be all in all (1 Cor 15: 28). There is in St. Paul a differentiated relationship between the God of Israel and Jesus Christ when it comes to the relationship between Israel and the church. God, who is ahead of us, is the One who loves us in freedom and mystery. Finally, this God of Israel will be dwelling within all. A Christian understanding of God refers to this God of Israel in movement, love, restoration, and cosmic indwelling. Christ’s work established peace (Eph 2:14–16) by tearing down the dividing wall between Israel and the nations, beating down the enmities between human groups, and conquering the dualistic global law of human history. This tearing down does not mean the expatriation or nullification of Judaism. Justification in a social public dimension means the reconciliation of people in the world by recognizing and affirming the blessing of Israel through Christ’s death and resurrection. Reconciliation is not the Christian metanarrative that imposes the atonement upon different people

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by totalizing the unique place of Israel into the Christian religion. Rather, reconciliation forms the divine infinite horizon inviting all nations to the love of God, allowing for them in their own right, while confirming the particular way of Israel’s covenant and blessing. In the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:1–21; Gal 2:1–10) Jewish followers of Jesus remain obligated to the Torah while Gentile followers of Jesus are obligated to observe only the Noahide law, the so-called Torah for the Gentiles. There is reciprocal unity and solidarity between Israel and the church in light of Torah, the Word of God. For the purpose of Jewish-Christian renewal, it is noteworthy to take seriously Marquardt’s endeavor. Marquardt brings to light the rabbinic exegesis of the seven Noahide commandments (avoidance of idolatry, unchastity, bloodshed, profaning the name of God, robbery, cutting off f lesh from a living animal, and the establishment of courts of justice).16 According to rabbinic Judaism of the second century, the seven Noahide commandments are discussed as God’s gracious and universal plan for the ultimate disposition of the Gentiles. God’s salvation is not confined to Israel, but is open for all through the Noahide covenant and commandments.17 Non-Jewish people fall under the universal way of God’s Torah, albeit this is a lesser version of Torah as compared to Israel’s halachic commandments. Paul shares this view of the Torah for the Gentiles by dealing with the issue of the freedom of Gentile Christians from the observance of the Torah (Gal 5:21; cf. 1 Cor 6:9f ). The seven Noahide commandments are seen as a list of the cardinal sins, which are an ethical concomitant to St. Paul’s catalogue of vice. The tradition of Christian systematic theology has responded to the Noahide Torah in terms of natural theology or in terms of an antithesis between law and gospel. However, this Gentile-Torah needs to be elaborated as a contribution to Jewish-Christian–Islamic coexistence and solidarity in light of their identity as people of God. Marquardt argues that the history of Noah is theologically important because it is a biblical narrative of God’s saving act for a humanity ruined in sin and corruption. The Noahide commandments are given to this liberated humanity from the judgment.18 In this narrative we perceive God’s primary concern and mission about redeeming the lost people through God’s universal covenant. The New Jerusalem in a Trinitarian and eschatological movement has a central place. In the new creation, God dwells in a city whose gates are marked by the names of the twelve tribes of Israel (Rev 21:12), through which the kings of the earth bring their glory (Rev 21:24). In God’s indwelling, God will wipe every tear from their eyes. God is making all things new. The city’s temple is the Lord the Almighty and the Lamb (Rev 21: 4–5, 22). The cosmic dimension of a new heaven and a new earth confirms the historical dimension that concerns God’s fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel. God will fulfill God’s own mission. The Lamb of God as the light of the city of God (Rev 21:23) makes sure a cosmic and historical dimension in Christian eschatology. As St. Paul contends,

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“. . . Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Rom 15:8–9). Christ’s reconciliation is not the removal of God’s covenant with Israel, but confirmation and fulfillment of it for Israel and all nations. In Luke 2:32 Jesus is portrayed as “a light for the gentiles and glory for Israel.” Jesus associates himself with the Hebrew Scripture (Isa 61:1–2) in his public ministry and mission (Luke 4:18–19). However, in the history of Christian mission, Christian theology has undermined St. Paul’s exhortation to “not boast over the branches”. Consequently the Christian attitude has been supercessionist, justifying the persecution and legal discrimination of the Jews. But it is not Christianity that supports the root, but the root, Israel, that supports Christianity (Rom 11:18). The good news of the witness to the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 8:12) does not collapse the eschatological reign of the God of Israel into the single person Jesus Christ. Rather, Jesus Christ stands for the God of Israel and enters into the mystery of God’s eschatology rather than dethroning the place of God. Through Jesus’ cross and resurrection God grafts the Christian community onto God’s covenantal blessing with Abraham. God is the God of the Jews and also the God of the Gentiles. Because God is one, God will justify the circumcised as well as the uncircumcised on the grounds of faith. “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law” (Rom 3:31). Abraham, as “the father of many nations” (Rom 4:18), is also a cardinal example of justification and evangelical life. “. . . it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendents, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham . . .” (Rom 4:16). Christian theology can overcome its anti-Semitism when it takes seriously and positively the Jewish “No” to Jesus Christ as their Messiah. It is vital to construct a Christology that does not exclude the place of Israel. A Christological project must be committed to the social-Jewish character of Jesus with his people in the context of Dan 7. Jesus needs to be seen in his social relationships, not only from the perspective of the Old Testament, but also from the perspective of the people of the New Testament. If a dogmatic tradition of Christology from above neglects Jesus as the Son of Man from below in his social location with Israel and the poor, such a dogmatic Christology would remain blind to the prophetic-diaconal character of Jesus as the partisan of those at the margins as well as a light to lighten the Gentiles and the Glory of his people Israel (Luke 2:32; Isa 49:6). Jewish-Christian dialog and renewal is an indispensable contributor to a Christian reframing of missiology that is grounded in the self-communication of the triune God through the living and eternal Word, Jesus Christ. The

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church, called by God, is renewed and transformed as the testimony to God’s narrative of Torah that guides Israel, the church, and the world through Christ and the Spirit. Thus, the church’s mission of God’s narrative becomes a transformative mission in recognition of Israel as it relates to the triune God who goes ahead of us, loving us in freedom and promise. The God of Israel creates and changes all in all through Christ’s justification, reconciliation, and accompaniment in the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit in Accompaniment with God’s Word Mission has a Trinitarian character when we consider God’s selfcommunication in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ proclamation of his ministry and mission, we perceive a Trinitarian dimension of Jesus’ accompaniment with his people. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of Lord’s favor.”(Luke 4:18–19; Isa 61:1–2). The Spirit accompanies Jesus’ prophetic ministry for God’s kingdom proclaiming God’s year of favor to those who are poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed. The Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of truth” will guide the followers of Jesus into all truth ( John 16:13). This truth is conveyed to each new generation in a way that is paradigmatically exemplified by Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:31ff ). A theology of mission involves faith’s seeking understanding as a way of seeing God’s work in the world under the prevenient guidance of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Spirit is deeply connected with Jesus’ mission of accompaniment with the poor that stands in expectation of the kingdom of God. In the life of the church following Christ’s mission the chief actor and driving force is the Holy Spirit. John’s understanding of the Word (Logos) is grounded in the Hebrew Bible. Often in the Hebrew Bible, as in the opening verse of the gospel of John, the Word of God is personified (Isa 55:10–11; Pr 8:22–36). Wisdom (Sophia) is begotten and brought forth before the beginning of the earth. God’s Saying is connected with the bringing forth of Sophia from within God’s self. In Proverbs’ account of the beginning, Sophia is poured out of the depths of God’s self. God’s being is the One who is in relation to the Word and the Spirit. The internal life of God through the Word and Spirit (Sophia) is directed toward the world.19 Jesus’ missional task becomes obvious in the testimony of John the Baptist: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” ( John 1:29, 36). One of the most impressive mission stories is obvious in Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well at Sychar ( John 4:7–26). In John 3:16 we read the gospel in miniature. Through faith a person partakes of the benefits of Christ’s suffering love. Faith is stronger

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than death ( John 11: 25–26). The Trinitarian content of sending is evident in Jesus’ breathing the Holy Spirit; sending takes place with authorization from the Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ farewell discourse ( John14–16) he promises the sending of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit as Paraclete is the Advocate (14:17, 26; 15: 26; 16:7), Comforter and Encourager of Christ’s followers. Jesus foresees the completion of his mission through his death. He promises that the Father and the Son will send a Helper to be with his disciples and to teach, equip, enable, transform, and guide them in Trinitarian mission. Acts 1:8 is an important text for linking the gift of the Holy Spirit to worldwide witness. The Spirit testifies to Christ and the testimony continues in the world as the Holy Spirit testifies through the disciples. The Spirit will be with them forever ( John 14:16) and will teach them everything; reminding them of all that Jesus has said to them ( John 14: 26) and guiding them into all truth ( John 16:13). In the western tradition the Holy Spirit has suffered a lack of theological development. The Holy Spirit has been reduced to grace or soteriology. The resurgence of the Spirit came with the birth of the PentecostalCharismatic movement and now this movement is challenging and controversial, proven to be a thorn in the side of the traditional mainline church. Paul refers to the concept of spiritual gifts or charismatic gifts as God’s entire work of salvation in Jesus Christ and as a free gift of God in Christ (Rom 5:15, 6:23). Spiritual or charismatic gifts also mean special gifts distributed by the Holy Spirit called “gifts of grace” (charisma) (1 Cor 12:11; Rom 12:4–8; 1 Cor 12–14, Eph 4:7,11, 1 Peter 4:10–11). In striving for the greater gifts (1 Cor 12: 31), the most important of all is the gift of love (1 Cor 13). Charismatic gifts are given for the purpose of confessing Christ (1 Cor 12:3) and for building up the church. The discernment of spirits (1 Cor 12:10) is one of the most valuable gifts. The presence of the Spirit is a foretaste of what is to come: a pledge, a down payment (arrabon), a guarantee, or a first installment of what is to come (2 Cor 1:22). “You were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption . . . to the praise of his glory” (Eph 1:13–14). The Spirit accompanying God’s Word is a characteristic of the Christian mission in bearing witness to the provenience of the Spirit.20 God’s self-communication in Christ through the Holy Spirit brings the churches in both the South and the North to mutual recognition, respect, and solidarity in regard to contribution, limitation, struggle, and common mission. Non-Western churches in Africa, Asia, and Latin America retain a unique distinctiveness, open to a Pentecostal-Charismatic renewal of life and spiritual gifts. In the WCC General Assembly in Canberra, Australia in 1991, the main theme, “Come, Holy Spirit,” addressed this issue. In Luke 24:13–35, Christ is a stranger who accompanies his frustrated people. This story points specifically to other dimensions of Christ’s

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mission in accompaniment with those who are surrounded by failure, disappointment, and frustration. Here we perceive that the risen Christ is a missionary Lord, bringing the disciples on the road to Emmaus, who are on the brink of despair, toward the testimony of the resurrection. The resurrection anticipates the beginning of the Christian church and mission in a completely new era. It changes everything and leads to the founding of the Christian church. Roland Allen, an Anglican missionary working in China from 1895 to 1902, advocated for a radical return to New Testament patterns of mission. In Allen’s theology of mission the presence and power of the Holy Spirit is crucial and important. As long as missionaries adopt the position of authority and approach indigenous people as “the poor heathen,” their faith in the power of the Holy Spirit is undermined. “The work of the missionary cannot be done by imposing things from without. The one result which he desires is the growth and manifestation of the Spirit from within.” 21 Some scholars attempt to radicalize Allen’s mission of the Spirit toward the Pentecostal mission.22 Luke’s theology of mission has a strong pneumatological scope. It stresses the reality and inf luence of the Holy Spirit in undergirding the prophetic concern for the poor. The word of divine promise is realized and fulfilled by the work of the Holy Spirit. The Word of God becomes act through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, the partisan of those at the margins and the aliens, fulfills the Spirit of emancipation and protest against the culture of death. As the prophet Isaiah proclaims (Isa 42:1–3), “I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles . . . He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick until he brings justice to victory. And in his name the Gentiles will hope” (Matt 12:18). The conversion of Gentiles in Acts 15 reaches its peak in James’s speech (Acts 15:13–21) in connection with the Holy Spirit who fulfills Amos’s prophecy (16–18). The Spirit accompanies people and transforms their lives as a witness to the glad tidings of the gospel. In the physical absence of Jesus, the Spirit will be sent by the Father to be with the disciples. God’s mission is grounded in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ with whom the Spirit accompanies and witnesses to the gospel by recognizing and renewing people in the intra- and extra-ecclesial sphere. If we uphold ecclesia semper reformanda, (church is in need of continual renewal) then we should also maintain missio ecclesiae semper reformanda (church’s mission is in need of continual renewal) as we follow the God who is ahead of us, accompanying religious outsiders through the Spirit. The church that participates in God’s wider mission in the world is guided by the universal work of the Holy Spirit.23 Here diaconal mission, which is the church’s caring ministry, expresses the gospel in action; connected with people in need, creating a community of embrace, caring for creation, and struggling for justice. The church receives its mandate and mission of discipleship from the triune God; this God is the God of the future who is conceptualized as

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the God who will finally indwell within all by the presence of the Spirit. Every decisive turning point in the church’s mission in the Acts of the Apostles is based on the special presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit. We are aware that the Holy Spirit is the real initiator in invigorating Peter’s proclamation in Cornelius’ home (Acts 10:44–48). The Spirit enlightens the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:29), leads the apostle Paul to Europe instead of Asia Minor (Acts 16:9), and guides Paul and Barnabas on a missionary journey from the church of Antioch (Acts 13:2–4). At Pentecost the disciples and the people are baptized in the Holy Spirit. That is, their baptism is initiated by the resurrected Christ. It is the Spirit who gives them power (dynamis) for the task of the proclamation of the gospel (Acts 1:8). The Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of communication of God in Christ, removes the curse of Babel and strengthens the Christian witness to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Luke’s version of the Great Commission “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:47). Paul confesses his life of mission “as a captive to the Spirit” (Acts 20:22). The meaning of making disciples is forgiveness of sins as a part of teaching discipleship. The sincerity of forgiveness is best illustrated in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32). The gospel aims at the renewal of the whole person. A holistic mission is based on Jesus’ own example. Liberating words, healing deeds, and forgiving actions belong together. A holistic view of mission is demonstrated in Luke’s framework that envisions the renewal of life and establishes justice in the world by way of clear testimony. In a prophetic-missional direction, the church demonstrates an understanding of God’s presence or nearness through the Trinitarian confession. God’s relationship with Jesus or Jesus’ relationship with God is understood as the relationship between Father and Son, or Son and Father, in which the “humanity” of God is conceptualized in relationship with the Holy Spirit. The kingdom of God is righteousness and shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17). Seen in the context of the Greek Bible, God becomes the personal object to be known to the Spirit who explores and searches the depths of God (1 Cor 2:10). The Spirit is the Spirit of God’s self-knowledge because the Spirit is from God and to God (1 Cor 2:12). If the Spirit does not communicate to us, then God remains closed and unknown to us. The unknown God (Acts 17:23) cannot be the subject matter of Christian faith in the triune God. The Spirit is the Spirit of communication and interpretation of the Word of God because the Spirit illuminates the human heart and converts people to God’s life and grace in Jesus Christ. The Spirit who stands in reference to the depths and archaic ground of God is the God who questions, explores, and illuminates God’s self. This Spirit in the Trinitarian life is the demythologizing ground for mythical conceptions of many gods. No one comprehends who God is except the Spirit of God (1 Cor 2:11). This Spirit as life-giver is the Spirit of preserving and sustaining all living creatures rather than a spirit monopolized by the church.

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Here, Trinitarian language can be appropriated for a hermeneutic of suspicion regarding a mythical concept of gods and the ecclesial encapsulation of God’s living voice. At the same time, Trinitarian language is articulated as a hermeneutic of retrieval, considering a biblical concept of God’s Word as mission in a Trinitarian-historical manifestation for all in the presence and guidance of the Spirit. The extra-ecclesial voice of God is recognized as being heard in the world. The Spirit, who is deeply and mysteriously bound up with God, is the Spirit of love in protest against death. The life-giving Spirit puts to death the deeds of the body (Rom 8:13). The Spirit blows where it will and it is not merely confined to the ecclesial sphere. In reference to Isa 52:7–10, Paul emphasizes an aesthetic dimension of the spreading of the gospel by exclaiming, “how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Rom 10:14–15). If the church’s mission purports to understand the people of God as active participants in a mission of viva vox evangelii, then proclamation and communication of the gospel under the guidance of the Spirit are essential components in an aesthetical dimension of the church’s mission. The Spirit is a Spirit of God’s beauty that is revealed in the Good News of Jesus Christ. A mission of God’s Word that is conceptualized in the Trinitarian sending has an aesthetic dimension in service to people in the world through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Thus, evangelization refers to communicating what God in Christ under the guidance of the Spirit has done historically, concretely, and practically for us. God’s grace of justification extra nos in the presence of the Spirit undergirds a grace of discipleship and equips and guides the church by the Spirit for participation in God’s Word mission in the world. In the guidance of the Holy Spirit God’s justifying grace stands in correct relationship with the discipleship of diakonia in an aesthetic-evangelical sense. An aesthetic dimension of evangelization in communicative action should be done by peaceful proclamation, persuasion, and dialog in transformative recognition of indigenous people’s rights to their way of life and religion.24 Evangelization in communicative action in the presence of the Spirit has nothing to do with coercion, exploitation, conquest, genocide, or a mentality of cultural superiority. It is the Holy Spirit who awakens, accompanies, and converts people rather than missionary agents. God’s Mission as Word-Event and Religious Outsiders Christian teleevangelists and exclusivists disagree with the religious openness of liberal-minded Christians by insisting on the biblical claim that Jesus Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life.” However, Christianity’s absolute claim of Jesus Christ, when seen in relation to the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Bible, especially Paul’s theology of Israel, needs to be refined and deepened in a new light.

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Seen in the Hebrew context, God’s concern about the alien is remarkable. Leviticus 19:33 is one of the best examples: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” God cares for the poor and the alien, commending that Israel should allow them to sustain themselves by owner’s not visiting their vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen (Lev 19:10). In the context of Abraham’s life, we are aware that God is pleased to have Abraham blessed by Melchizedek. In today’s biblical study Melchizedek is understood to be a non-Jewish leader of the religious community. That is, someone outside of the Levitical or Aaronic order. In our general climate of religious tolerance and indifference, God speaks to us through symbolic figures like Melchizedek on behalf of righteousness and universal peace. In Gen 12 there is a comprehensive blessing for the descendents of Abraham. Besides Isaac, Ishmael is also a participant in Abraham’s blessing. A dimension of the promise of blessing is valid for all the people of the world. The God of Israel is the One who embraces Ishmael in God’s blessing of Abraham, becoming an advocate for Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness. God also used Cyrus, a pagan king, to help Israel. God changes Balaam’s intended curse by speaking through a donkey. From the mouth of Balaam, God’s speech event is not to be neglected regardless of its sinister message (Num 22:22–35). We read that “God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets” (Hebrews 1:1). God’s self-communication in Jesus Christ for all cannot be properly understood apart from God’s speech event throughout all the ages in their plural horizons. “The Lord is witness between you and me forever . . . The Lord shall be between me and you, and between my descendents and your descendents, forever” (1 Sam 23:42). The word “God” is the name of an event, an event that must be translated into the event of promise in daily communication and hospitality. This perspective articulates God’s communicative involvement as an open event in the public sphere. It is also affirmed in the synoptic context: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matt 18:20). This biblical view of God’s involvement in human daily communication characterizes God’s word-event as a living voice of God, facilitating us to hermeneutically reframe a theology of interreligious exchange.25 From the perspective of God’s irregular speech event in the public sphere we argue that God, even in God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, is qualitatively different from us, occupying a totally different place according to the mode of space and time. God challenges human attempts at reducing or degenerating God’s word-event into a human metaphysics of ontology or principle of onto-theology. The western metaphysics of onto-theology mixes ontology with theology, thus reducing the subject matter of theology (freedom and mystery of God’s word-event in Israel and Jesus Christ for all) to the order of being. The human being is elevated

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to mastery of the theological source. Onto-theological metaphysics universalizes or totalizes the unique position and direction of human lives and cultural–religious expressions in different times and places into the sameness of western metaphysics. Against this trend, God, revealed in Jesus Christ, is not reduced to a metaphysical concept of god. The God of the Bible is free, living, and emancipating, involved in human history and standing on the side of the oppressed, the poor, the threatened innocent, widows, orphans, and aliens. Under the terms of the irregular style of God’s speech event, a hermeneutical ref lection on God’s mission of word-event is practiced unmethodically, chaotically, and transversally as seen metaphorically in guerrilla warfare. This irregular directive runs counter to the danger inherent in the western theological principle of universalizing and reducing difference/otherness into sameness. A theological work and task can be infinitely more fruitful than the achievement of all too methodical systematizations. 26 A missiology of God’s word-event in freedom, love, and reconciliation must think and speak of the church’s missional discipleship and diakonia, acknowledging the otherness of people and the uniqueness of non-Christian religions in a particular age, time, and place. God’s speech event may occur in an irregular and transversal manner, challenging the grand narrative of totalization and centralization. It acknowledges the particular form of local, specific struggles, promoting a verbal activity of parrh ēsia (speaking the truth audaciously). A concept of God’s mission of word-event in a transversal, irregular manner and its discursive praxis of parrh ēsia oppose the rigid vertical hierarchies of a state-religion alliance apparatus built on power, money, and mass media. It also challenges the quasi-horizontal machine of a colonized and reified life world under globalized capitalism. The God who speaks is not received as any special, supernatural Word, different from human speech. The gospel came to us in the form of a daily communication. This aspect of the gospel as viva vox Dei describes the all-important place of the linguistic character in human experience of the truth of God’s word-event. Speaking about God means interpreting God’s coming to us in Christ, as we see it in light of God’s all-determining horizon that is conceived of as present and active in every way and direction. With regard to the irregularity of God’s speech event, a concept of transversality helps in securing a unique position of difference and otherness. It provides the image of one’s viewpoint while sitting in a train. The viewpoints of a landscape come into communication according to the landscape’s own dimension, rather than unifying or reducing many landscapes to one’s univocal standpoint.27 Likewise, God’s word-event brings the various viewpoints lying across the landscape of the remembered past into a communicative situation, without violating each individual experience of it.

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God may speak to us transversally through extra-biblical narratives and polemically through the physical face of others in a completely different and irregular manner from what we would expect. God’s missional act of self-communication in Jesus Christ crosses borders in a geographical and cultural sense and also boundaries of distinct fields or disciplines, opening up new spaces of knowledge and practice. God’s word-event in an irregular, transversal style affects God’s word as mission across cultural and geographical differences, recognizing the integrity of particularity and the play of diversity. This perspective shapes an irregular–transversal theology of Christian mission in a post-foundational orientation, characterizing and embodying it in an analogical–discursive contour. The terms “post-foundational” and “analogical-discursive” imply a critical-constructive ref lection on the transversal–irregular aspect of God’s speech event that may transpire in the world of religious pluralism. An analogical–discursive approach to God’s narrative in the public sphere is not fixed and univocal but polysemic, open ended in its interaction with a sociocultural context that also involves producing diverse meanings. Here an ethical rationality and responsibility that is oriented toward a transversal–irregular communication is sought in movement across the landscape of differences. The integrity of the differences is acknowledged at the same time that agreement in spite of the differences is sought. A transversal–irregular perspective suspends one’s quest for certainty in matters pertaining to foundational belief and principles grounded in an unimpeachable universality and necessity of the human metanarrative. Given the irregular–transversal side of God’s mission of word-event, it is noteworthy to mention the work of the Holy Spirit. God’s communicative mission cannot be understood apart from the role of the Spirit. In an encounter between Peter and Cornelius, the Spirit’s action underlines the conversion of Cornelius to the Christian gospel as it transforms the apostolic church’s mission toward the Gentiles. In this mutual recognition and transformation the apostolic church benefits from better understanding God’s communicative mission as inspired and guided by the Spirit. It is certain that God works through the church, but God also works through the Holy Spirit where the church does not yet exist: “. . . yet he has not left himself without a witness in doing good . . .” (Acts 14:17). God can accomplish God’s missionary–communicative work in the extra-ecclesial sphere. God loves and renews the church in God’s freedom for the world. The church is called and encouraged to be in need of ongoing renewal under the guidance of the Spirit in communication with the world. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’ ministry is recounted in Galilee. In Jesus’ day Galilee had a multiethnic population as compared to Jerusalem and its environment. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great (333–323 BCE), a number of Greeks had settled in the region. The Romans had introduced military colonies. Galilee is geographically and socially open in many directions since its population naturally has close contacts with

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people of different nationalities. A great multitude from Galilee followed Jesus and “came to him in great numbers from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, beyond the Jordan, and the region around Tyre and Sidon” (Mark 3:8). The gospel of Mark can be understood as the book of Jesus’ mission for the ochlos (public sinners and tax collectors) who come from both Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds. The concept of ochlos is universally relevant to those who are poor, marginalized, and oppressed under the Roman Empire or within the Jewish religious establishment. Mark provides a basis for mission in Jesus’ preferential option for accompaniment with the ochlos who are burdened on the downside of history. The missional paradigm of the cross accentuates that the kingdom of God is present in the world amidst human weakness and deformity. The man who publicly confesses the significance of Jesus’ death and recognizes him as God’s Son is not a Jew, but the “unclean” centurion: “Truly this man was God’s Son!”(Mark 15:39). Mark’s recognition of religious outsiders makes the voice of religious others an important factor in contributing to Christ’s mission of embracing the lost sheep of Israel as well as those who are in desperate need. In the story of the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24–30) a discursive form of Jesus’ parrhēsia encounters the witty discourse of the Syrophoenician woman. Here, the Jewish character of Jesus’ mission becomes obvious: “Let the children eat first. For it is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw them to dogs” (7: 26). The woman’s witty response is fully integrated within Mark’s framework to shape Jesus’ mission for religious outsiders. Her discursive cleverness implies a Greek horizon that comes to the subject matter of Jesus’ narrative, that is, God’s radical grace in Christ extra nos and for massa perditionis. Mark carefully expands Jesus’ sociobiography with the ochlos by integrating the voice of the pagan woman, allowing it to be a contributing factor to Jesus’ mission toward the Gentiles. Voices of religious outsiders like the Centurion and the Syrophoenician woman encounter the Jewish horizon of Jesus’ mission in such a way that theologia crucis in Mark’s context becomes decisive in Jesus’ mission, which transformatively embraces religious outsiders in the world. In Luke 7:1–10, a centurion comes to Jesus because a slave whom the centurion valued highly is ill. The Jewish elders appeal to Jesus earnestly, saying that “he is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us” (Luke 7:4f-5). Jesus is amazed at the centurion’s attitude: “I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed” (6f ). In a similar pattern to the story of the Syrophoenician woman, the story of the centurion who loves Israel and built the synagog articulates Jesus’ mission for Israel. The centurion’s humble words deeply touch Jesus. In the narrative of the Samaritan woman ( John 4:1–42) Jesus’ radical openness to religious outsiders is displayed as he breaks down the barrier between Jews and Samaritans. He becomes a border crosser. The parable of the

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Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–37) states that the gospel is practiced by the Samaritan better than by a priest and a Levite. Jesus transforms the Jewish concept of a neighbor into special concern for a victim. Paul affirms natural knowledge of God in a missional context. According to Romans 1:20–22 and 2:12–16, pagans have natural knowledge of the existence of God without connection to the special revelation of Jesus Christ. Moreover, in the Lucan description Paul recognizes in Athens a religious concern; an awe in the presence of the gods and in this respect—in the veneration of the unknown God—an obscure and unconscious presentiment of God. If this presentiment is misguided in temple worship and in the cult of images, the pagans are ignorant and must repent. Nevertheless, they are not godless or God-forsaken (Acts 17:22–28). This Pauline view of people of other cultures is connected with his theology of God’s reconciliation in Christ for the world. He does not want people to persist in paganism, but he invites them to faith in the salvific message of Christ. Here we notice that there is a biblical tendency of a particular confession to Jesus Christ ( John 14:6) toward the universality of the gospel in light of God’s reconciliation in Christ’s death and resurrection for all. God’s Word as mission event in this regard implies recognition of the other. In Luke’s framework (Acts 3:19–21) God fulfilled what had been foretold through all the prophets—that the Messiah would suffer. The time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through the holy prophets stands in an eschatological reservation regarding the second coming of Jesus Christ. A concept of universal restoration in an eschatological perspective is not confounded with a universal salvation that is misconceptualized as the “already event” of Christ’s death. In the Greek culture, events in human history are interpreted mainly as an adumbration of what is to come. This is a metaphysical concept of returning to the origin in a Platonic sense. In the Greek interpretation of the Logos the Jewish character of historical incarnation is left behind. In Origen’s doctrine of the apokatastasis, God’s mystery of eschatology in God’s novum is relegated to protology.28 God’s eschatology in a biblical context, however, is not reduced to a protological concept of universal salvation. Rather, it becomes the driving force for the church’s mission with respect to God’s lordship. For Paul a universal salvation of Israel (“all Israel will be saved”) points to God’s mystery and promise in an eschatological openness rather than implying a fixed doctrinal clarification or dogmatization. Thereby a traditional concept of theologia naturalis can be understood as a transformative Christian recognition of religious outsiders in light of God’s word of reconciliation. Theologia naturalis must not be conceptualized as an independent point of contact with the saving grace of God by discarding the place of Jesus Christ. Theologia naturalis is integrated and transformed in its traditional structure toward God’s communicative mission in recognition of religious outsiders through Christ’s reconciliation.

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We are placed ahead of the apostles by the encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, Ananias and Saul, and Peter and Cornelius in the biblical narrative. We already perceive that the Spirit converts people and transforms the apostolic mission for the Gentiles.29 The church is surprised, challenged, and renewed by the initiative role of the Spirit in carrying on God’s Word mission because the Spirit is promised upon all f lesh. In cleansing their hearts by faith, God has made no distinction between believers and religious outsiders (Acts 15). Considering the work of the Spirit in others, we need to expand a horizon of God’s mission of word-event from an intercultural perspective. Christian life is inspired and awakened by the mandate and discipleship of mission and evangelization as it relates to the irregular side of God’s speech act through the other in light of Christ’s reconciliation and in the presence of the Spirit. Thus, a theology of God’s mission of word-event assumes a public relevance by engaging in interdisciplinary and intercultural study as it seeks to involve human social, cultural life, and religious belief systems. It includes for its orientation the individual, spiritual, ecclesial, and extra-ecclesial sphere. A theology of God’s Word mission is characterized by surprise, joy, and transformation as it comes from the initiative of God’s speech event in Christ’s reconciliation through the Spirit for the church and the world. Subsequently, a theology of God’s Word as mission supports and undergirds a mission of intercultural exchange by deepening a recognition of the transversal irregularity of God’s act of speech and acknowledging the reality of religious pluralism. But God’s word as mission event regarding the reality of religious pluralism becomes a field of controversy. Evangelical missionaries have a fear of mixing the sacred with the profane. The creative integration of the gospel with different cultural belief systems is accused of polluting Christian instruction in considerable ways. It has been taken for granted that non-Western culture is inferior in articulating the Christian gospel. Nonetheless, it is certain that western Christianity has likewise been shaped and conditioned by its context, language, tradition, and cultural–philosophical orientation.30 In the history of Christian mission, cultural imperialism has been enmeshed with the propaganda of evangelism. Indigenous cultures have been humiliated, suppressed, and destroyed as alien, ominous, even devilish art and contrary to the “Western” gospel. Where the gospel turns out to be a symbol of power–knowledge domination by excluding and accusing the cultures of religious outsiders, a radical hermeneutic of suspicion and refusal emerges in the colonized experience of non-Western countries. Here, a significant endeavor is undertaken to overcome the limitation of the westernized and colonized gospel because it seriously considers the spirituality, wisdom, interpretation, and religious worldview of indigenous communities. Here, interreligious or cultural dialog and exchange has a prophetic–diaconal character.31 Is a Christian theology of mission convincing and compelling in the context of religious pluralism? We do not ignore biblical texts in support

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of exclusivism, double outcome of judgment, and supercessionism. ( John 14:1; Matt 12–32; Mark 9:45). There are biblical passages mentioning eternal death or hell (Matt 7:13f; 12:32; 25:31–46, Mark 9:45, 48; 16:16; John. 3:16, and so on.). However, Paul attests to God’s irrevocable faithfulness to God’s people, Israel. God’s grace of justification is embedded with the universal horizon of reconciliation (Rom 5:18; Col 1:20). Furthermore, in the Lucan description, Jesus states that the children of the world are often wiser than those of the light (Luke 16:8ff ). “Whoever is not against us is for us” (Mark 9:40). “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places” ( John 14:2). The particular confession of Jesus Christ cannot be properly understood and implemented apart from Jesus’ recognition of religious outsiders. To the Athenians in front of the Areopagus, Paul bears witness to solus Christus in the conviction that everybody lives, moves, and has his/her being in the universal reign of God (Acts 17:22, 27b, 28). We perceive that a universal dimension of the Old Testament plays an important role in Paul’s understanding of God’s reconciliation with the world. Eph 1:10 says, “. . . to gather up all things in him [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth.” There are biblical passages in support of Christological universalism in light of God’s reconciliation with all things (Col 1:20; Phil 2:10ff; 1 Cor 15:22, 25, 28; Rom 5:18, 11:32; Rev 21:5,and so on.). Paul’s theology of justification does not refer to the selfish private encapsulation of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ in the interest of excluding and condemning religious outsiders. Rather, it needs to be seen in a universal dimension of the Spirit in favor of them. “The wind blows wherever it pleases” ( John 3:8). “For he has preordained this salvation through his eternal intention, which cannot fail or be overthrown, and he has placed it for safekeeping into the almighty hand of our Savior Jesus Christ, from which no one can snatch us away ( John 10:28).” The expression of the restoration of all in Acts 3:21 describes the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of God’s holy prophets from that of the old. This means the fulfillment and restoration of God’s pro-missio. The universal tendency of Christ’s reconciliation, which is associated with God’s restoration of all, and the particular judgment are mutually attested in a biblical context. Nevertheless, the Scripture strongly affirms that God is free to speak to the world in a completely different manner from what Israel and church would expect through the face of religious outsiders. Given the biblical view of the reality that people live in a world of religious pluralism, it is important to define the life horizon of a multireligious society more positively in terms of God’s freedom and the mystery of God’s speech act through Christ’s reconciliation with the world. Consideration of the restoration that God speaks to people of the nonChristian world qualifies the truth of the gospel with faith, love, and hope. We live in a society of many cultures and religions, experiencing a need for reconciliation with and recognition of people of other cultures

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and faiths. An ecclesial diakonia of evangelization and reconciliation is a way of expressing the truth of God’s living Word-event in the public sphere.32 However, C. S. Song argues that truth judges, polarizes, and divides. The truth cannot unite the un-unitable, only love can.33 But in fact, love without truth is vulnerable to failing to be ethical– prophetic diakonia in following God’s communicative mission. Likewise, the Buddhist concept of wisdom with universal compassion is not possible without the Buddhist commitment to the truth. In an endeavor to listen to God’s act of speaking through religious outsiders, our understanding of the gospel, conditioned in our cultural and linguistic framework, can be enriched and renewed by the hermeneutical deliberation of God’s word through the Holy Spirit illumining and inspiring our hearts to the mysterious truth of God. A situation of religious pluralism is not merely a problem for western theology and a church that strives to overcome the limitations of western theology’s Babylonian captivity to the Enlightenment.34 A reality of religious pluralism in Asia and Africa is a determining factor in the church’s relationship with people of other faiths. Vandalism against Buddhist temples in Seoul, South Korea, done by a Christian fundamentalist group, is an indicator of the church’s presumptuous incapacity and aggressive crusade mentality. This incident makes us seriously consider the need to improve the church’s relationships with other faith communities. A western crusade mentality, which inf luenced the mission church in Asia, makes the gospel into ominous news for people of other faith communities. Evangelization in a non-Western context is intimately related to a hermeneutical deliberation of inculturation by elaborating the important cultural–religious horizons of those who receive the gospel. The church is called to attentively and humbly listen to the universal activity of God’s speech event that can make religious outsiders analogical instruments in conveying God’s mystery of communication to the church. Through recognizing the human dignity and spiritual validity of religious outsiders, the church is called to participate in God’s mission as a word-event taking place in the world of religious pluralism. In this communicative process of the fusion of horizons, the church benefits by being enriched and deepened by the irregularity of God’s living voice.35 An emphasis on social location in the interpretation of Jesus’ life and movement makes explicit the subject matter of the Scripture through an act of critical distance. From the standpoint of the marginal and the different it reveals an alliance between human knowledge and political power. This emphasis refurbishes the sociocritical dimension and the discursive form of parrhēsia in the deliberation of God’s speech act through the religious outsiders. In interreligious dialog; the priority is to express an ethical concern and commitment to the lowest of the low (Matt 25) in the religious world because these are brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. Ethical–practical concern shapes our interreligious dialog in sharing religious wisdom and spirituality. It hermeneutically develops intertextual

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and scriptural similarity-in-difference between the Christian narrative and non-Christian wisdom promoting mutual respect and self-renewal in light of the communicative mystery of God. God is the creator and sustainer of all that exists. God’s own triune being is revealed in Christ as an ocean of infinite love overf lowing to all of God’s work in creation and to all human beings. God’s love and compassion is obvious and manifest in Jesus’ eagerness to welcome the signs of faith among people outside the house of Israel, his hospitality toward religious outcasts, and his final word of forgiveness on the cross.36 A mission of word-event stands in openness and solidarity with religious outsiders, characterized by a humble attitude, spiritual poverty, and willingness to audaciously be renewed and enriched by the other: This missional position regards and values God’s communicative mystery as it is heard in the lives of people in a world of religious pluralism. A balance between Christian uniqueness as a faith community and openness to the world can be characterized and proposed in terms of a hermeneutic of God’s word as a transformative mission event. At this juncture, fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeks understanding) paves the way to a theological epistemology that underscores Verbum Dei quaerens intellectum et dialogum (the Word of God seeks understanding and dialog) with religious outsiders. The theology of God’s mission as a word-event underscores a discursive form of parrh ēsia for the sake of promoting the full humanity of the marginalized, the victim, and the voiceless in the world of religions. Henceforth, missio Dei is redefined and improved in light of the mission of God’s Word in communication that takes place in Israel and the church, seeking understanding and dialog with the life world of religious outsiders. This perspective configures and reframes God’s mission in a more ethnically diverse and religiously pluralist contour. God’s Mission as Word Event: Theologia Crucis and Trinitarian Eschatology David Bosch speaks of a relationship between eschatology and mission in a perspective of creative tension. For him, eschatologization of mission or the historicization of mission is not a viable option. He advocates for Christian mission in an eschatological configuration by embracing both future-oriented and present-oriented perspectives.37 Paul’s theology of the word of the cross (1 Cor 1:18) frames his deliberation of theologia crucis in affirmation of John’s theology of life, theologia vitae. God lives and is known as the living God. New life is the life coming out of God. Christ has set us free ( John 8:36; Gal 5:1). However, freedom without commitment to emancipation is vulnerable to an irresponsible self-indulgence, while emancipation without freedom is blind to the collective experiment of a barbarian society in the disguise of emancipation.

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In John 5:26 we read that “the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself.” God has life in God’s self. This inner life says that God is the living God. According to John’s prolog, in the beginning was the Word that was with God. And the Word was God. This statement is confirmation of life and freedom within God’s life, in which God shares God’s inner life with the Son in the presence of the Spirit. The new life of humanity comes from God’s inner life shining and sharing life in the darkness of the world. God’s mission through the Word is defined as a divine mission of sharing life with the world. The immanent Trinity proves that God is free, living, liberating, and saving. The immanent Trinity is the basis for God’s Word mission as a theology of God’s life, inviting all to the living God in communion with the Son and the Spirit. A theology of Trinitarian mission is Christologically and covenantly articulated in the Jesus’ prayer (17:21). A biblical concept of God’s transcendence is secured in the concept of God in God’s inner-Trinitarian self as the one who loves in freedom, fellowship, promise, and liberation. God’s transcendence in the Trinitarian life points to God’s mission of wordevent establishing a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob—including Ishmael and Hagar—revealing God’ self as the Father of Jesus Christ in the presence of the Holy Spirit. The name of Jesus Christ enters into the mystery of the God of Israel who has a Trinitarian-missional history. God for us (the economic Trinity) is grounded in God’s Trinitarian living self as the source of eternal life, freedom, reconciliation, and liberation. A Trinitarian confession of the God of Israel is connected with God’s eschatological dynamism that is God’s name, YHWH—“God will be that will be.” The name of God finds its locus in Paul’s eschatological theology, which states that “God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28), or the statement of John the apocalyptist—“God will dwell with them as their God” (Rev 21:3). The eschatological Immanuel is announced as “God will be with them.” God’s mission of a promised future in the New Jerusalem is highlighted in God’s comfort of the innocent victims: “God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more: mourning and crying and pain will be more, for the first things have passed away” (Rev 21:4). This covenantal Immanuel is associated in Ezek 37:27 with the new temple, and the covenant with Israel is extended to human beings in all nations. “My dwelling place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” God’s final dwelling in the midst of the people does not nullify God’s self-identification with the Jewish people but encompasses the shalom of all nations, animals, mountains, and streams. This points to a new heaven and a new earth (Isa 11; 65:17ff; 66:22). In the cosmic dimension of the world to come (olam haba), the fulfillment of God’s historical covenant with Israel is central. God’s covenant with Israel is universalized for all nations. All nations will participate in the privilege and the promises granted by the God of Israel. God’s Word as mission will be fulfilled in the eschatological universalization of the

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particularity of God’s covenant with Israel through the Lamb of God for all nations. The twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles of the church form the gates and walls of the holy city and will eternally serve God and the Lamb. The song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb are praised. All nations shall come and worship before God (Rev 15:3–4). Having considered this, it is pivotal to consider Bonhoeffer’s insight into the relationship between the blessing of the Hebrew Bible for Israel and the theologia crucis in the Greek Bible. The cross without connection to Israel’s blessing becomes an abstract principle. “The only difference between the Old and New Testament in this respect is that in the Old the blessing includes the cross, and in the New the cross includes the blessing.” 38 Theologia crucis does not nullify God’s faithfulness to Israel (Rom 3:3). Rather, theologia crucis in an eschatological contour affirms Simeon’s prophecy: Jesus as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2: 32). Theologia crucis, without dethroning the place of Israel, takes into account the Jewish character of Jesus, because Jesus was born a Jew (Martin Luther). Jesus Christ as the bringer of God’s blessing for Israel and God’s revelation for the Gentiles underlines the Christological–eschatological framework of the Trinity. Christ’s mission fulfills and confirms pro-missio Dei in covenant with Israel and for all, which is in turn accomplished in the Son’s obedience to God’s lordship. The Son, eternally begotten of God the Father, becomes known in the Son’s obedience in subordination to the Father (I Cor 15: 28). Identification between God the Father and God the Son must be understood in a qualified sense in light of the relation of origin: God the begetter and the Son begotten in the procession of the Spirit as the bond of love in inner-Trinitarian life as well as in historical economic life. The doctrine of the Trinity, understood properly, is based on the activity of God’s Word as visible in God’s missional history. God corresponds to God’s self in a Trinitarian differentiation of the Father, Son, and Spirit. The Word of God essentially is the person of God speaking (Dei loquentis persona). God’s act of speaking underlines the triune God who speaks about God’s self through promise, law, and gospel in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Opera trinitatis ad extra (The work of the Trinity toward the world) bears witness to God’s living, perichoretic, and eschatologically open-ended life, that is, the mysterious Place (Makom) of the world. God is the Place of sustaining and renewing the creaturely world that is directed toward God’s Place of consummating the creation. The immanent Trinity speaks of God’s living and dynamic historicity as it is in historical becoming and eschatological coming. God in self will be finally revealed and identified with God for us in the eschatological Trinity. The history of promise is an expression of the God who speaks of God’s self with the promised future.39 God’s mysterious topos in an inner-Trinitarian–eschatological contour provides the primary meaning of a missional theology of Christian hope

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for eternal life, via aeterna. This hope is oriented toward the new heaven and the new earth. A theology of pro-missio Dei articulates that God’s being comes to us historically by sharing God’s life with Israel, the church, and the world in expectation of the coming world (Place) of God. Eschatology stands prior to the doctrine of creation. Therefore, the history of creation must be interpreted in the light of God’s promisio and missio in the emancipation history of Israel from Egypt and God’s eschatological new creation in Jesus Christ (2 Cor 5:17). God is the one who causes breath to enter the dry bones and makes them alive (Ezek 37:5–6). God shares God’s internal life with Jesus and brings us into the life of a fundamentally new eon through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As for Christian eschatology, genuine hope comes from the Word of God, which is a f lower bud of Christian hope and eschatology. A hope for the new creation comes from the promise of the Word of God—“See, I am making all things new” (Rev 21:5). God’s promise points in a forward direction by transforming the present status quo in light of God’s in-breaking coming. God’s Word as mission in the eschatological coming points to God’s final Immanuel, dwelling among the people and living creatures in the New Jerusalem. Theologia crucis is interwoven with the eschatological Lamb of God in which a presentative eschatology is interconnected with the eschatological coming of God. This, in turn, concretizes and embodies the grace of eschatology in the public–missional sphere. God as the Subject of God’s speaking opens the Trinitarian life to covenantal–eschatological history through the incarnation, mission, and resurrection of the crucified Christ and reconciliation for all. Jesus as the man of the past, the present, and the future, in the presence of the Spirit, will accomplish his obedience eschatologically in subordination to God’s lordship.40 Within the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, an eschatological horizon of expectation about the Place of God is analogically realized on earth. God’s arrival in Jesus’ mission of accompaniment with the poor sharpens our present participation in God’s mission history against the reality of violence and injustice and likewise keeps our praxis from revolutionary excess or reductionism. God as the source of light fulfills God’s promise of new creation. Christian eschatology is the teaching of “no place as yet” in light of God as the One who means the Place of the world. The Place of God’s kingdom guides, renews, and transforms the church’s mission and the world. Christian mission galvanizes the church’s discipleship in service to God’s Word as mission for world renewal that stands in God’s eschatological coming. The Word of Eschatology and Christian Hope Eschatology is a doctrine of Christian hope in God’s promise of the consummation of creation; it is not merely reduced to the doctrine of the

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last things or the doctrine of the end. Eschatology addresses the meaning of God’s name, YHWH, which implies the future as God’s essential nature.41 For Moltmann, the Easter appearances of Jesus and the resurrection of the dead are eschatological events that give shape to the anticipation of Jesus’ future. Jesus Christ, as the one who is proclaimed, is yet to come. The final revelation, understood as promise, is also conceived of as the fulfillment of the promise of Christ. Moltmann’s theology of hope focuses on the eschatological resurrection and future of Christ. Here, final revelation as eschatological event takes place in the promise and fulfillment of what has not yet happened. The fulfillment of the resurrection of the dead and the universal lordship of Christ is central to Moltmann’s project of the theology of hope. Thus, hope has primacy over faith, so that faith remains fragmentary and uncertain in light of the hope.42 Thereby, the promissory character of the gospel, based on resurrection and the future of Christ, unfortunately replaces the primacy of Israel’s eschatological hope in the promise of Yahweh’s lordship because law and promise are mutually exclusive; the promise of Israel is in anticipation of the gospel and has its future in the gospel. However the law has its end in the gospel and is made past.43 Subsequently, a theology of hope in Moltmann’s fashion has little to do with Jesus’ incarnational ministry in accompaniment with ochlos, namely massa perditionis (the public lost multitude). This theology sidesteps a sociocritical analysis of the concrete human historical life situation.44 Unlike a theology of hope that envisions the gospel as the end of the Torah, a Christian eschatology of God’s Place retains at the heart pro-missio and missio Dei in God’s covenant with Israel that Christ carries for the Gentiles through his death and resurrection. Christian eschatology is grounded in the past and present work of the Holy Spirit in the promised future of Christ’s death and resurrection, articulating the church’s relationship with the Jewish community as well as the community of those on the margin. All biblical statements about the hope for God’s future are based on God’s promise in covenant with Israel and are connected with the person and history of Jesus Christ under the guidance of the Spirit. The crucified Christ has the future; his resurrection is the first form of parousia characterizing that future. Christ’s adventus begins with the resurrection of the crucified. But Christian hope is not projected by an anticipation of God’s promised future through Christ’s Easter appearance. Rather it takes root in the eschatological dimension of the Word of God in God’s covenant with Israel and Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection, engaging with a human concrete historical life context. We “were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). The God of Israel is a God of hope (Rom 15:13); “the root of Jesse shall come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him the Gentiles shall hope” (Rom 15:12). The mystery of Jesus Christ was not made known to humankind in a previous

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generation. “It has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Eph 3:5–6). A Christian theology of hope is expressed in regard to the Gentiles’ status as fellow heirs with Israel.45 Christian evangelization in service to God’s Word as mission is aesthetically expressed: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, Your God reigns” (Isa 52:7). This mission of God’s reign is confirmed by Jesus Christ who “came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near (Eph 2: 17). God gathers the outcasts of Israel and others to God’s house, “called a house of prayer for all the nations” (Isa 56: 7f; Mark 11:17). Through the peace and reconciliation of his death and resurrection, Jesus Christ establishes his mission of peace and reconciliation by confirming God’s Place for gathering and embracing the outcasts of Israel and the Gentiles. Christ’s mission integrates the Gentiles into God’s mystery of Israel’s election and hope. The Gentiles, who were far off, become fellow heirs sharing Israel’s election and hope.46 God’s Word as mission in a Trinitarian–eschatological contour establishes theologia crucis as the place of entrance for the Christian church to establish fellowship with Israel, the poor, and the alien in the public sphere. This perspective constitutes and embodies God’s Word mission in light of theologia crucis and Trinitarian eschatology. An eschatological dimension of God’s Word comes from God’s promise. Prolepsis has to be grounded in the universality of God’s Word event that socially, historically, and practically sharpens a theological–universal project of prolepsis or advent. The Word of God is the source from which time springs. The Word of God is not subject to a future that is to come but is immanent to every time—future, present, and past time.47 According to Käsemann, Jesus’ prayer “Your kingdom come . . . on earth as it is in heaven” must be interpreted as a petition to God as well as a critical challenge to evil structures. The eschatological coming of God’s kingdom must be translated into “a radical concern for the penultimate.” 48 The Word of Promise and Prolepsis Pannenberg starts with a proof of God from the cosmos. For him the question of God has to do with the consideration of reality as a whole. Reality is open ended toward the future; the world is proleptically qualified as having a provisional character. God demonstrates indirect selfrevelation in the mirror of God’s action in history. The full self-revelation of God in glory becomes obvious to the degree that the whole of history is understood as revelation that is not yet finished in light of God’s full and universal self-revelation.

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Consequently, Pannenberg’s theology of history as revelation in a proleptic contour undermines a theology of God’s word-event. History is regarded as the history of tradition and it is in this context that the revelation of God takes place. The past encounters us in the language of tradition. However, Pannenberg is not concerned with connecting the language of Exodus in the past with the eschatological language of Christ’s death and resurrection; a theology of prolepsis is not capable of accentuating God’s Word as mission in terms of proposing liberation from bondage to an ideologically distorted and oppressive tradition.49 According to Pannenberg, Jesus’ resurrection is a historically demonstrable prolepsis, that is, the prolepsis of the universal end. Thus the general resurrection of the dead is forestalled. The theology of universal history addresses a cosmos that is open ended with a teleological trend toward the future. It is recognized as an indirect revelation of God. The recognition of God in history has a proleptic and anticipatory character. In this light, a biblical notion of God’s mission as the word-event that transpires in the present history between promise and fulfillment with shalom and liberation is left behind in favor of a prolepsis of the universal history. The destiny of the risen Jesus forestalls the end of universal history and in the anticipation of that destiny all wait. Unlike Moltmann, Pannenberg does not accentuate the eschatological vision between the Easter appearance of Jesus Christ and his promised future. Pannenberg contends that the Easter appearance of Jesus is experienced and proclaimed in the apocalyptic expectation of the general resurrection of the dead. In the apocalyptic framework of the universal history, theologia crucis recedes into the background in favor of the general resurrection of all. Theologia crucis receives its mark and character as eschatologia crucis only from an eschatology of the general resurrection. General hope for the resurrection of all replaces specific hope through Israel and Christ.50 Such a pan-eschatological vision faces resistance in Paul’s theology with the eschatological reservation in view of the place of Israel and God’s mystery. The experience of the eschaton comes from the Holy Spirit. Eschatological expectation finds expression in pneumatological manifestations. A presentative, social-existential form of eschatology is connected with the Holy Spirit. The concept of promise links our present to God’s future. Against this biblical trend, Pannenberg argues that the concept of promise is not adequate to the proleptic reality of Jesus Christ, situated in the distinctive tension between “already” and “not yet.” Jesus’ resurrection is understood as the in-breaking prolepsis of the universal resurrection of all.51 Unlike Pannenberg, I am convinced that the fulfillment of time in Jesus Christ (already) is an eschatological event in our not-yet redeemed world. The time of revelation (Christ’s mission) as the time of fulfillment is essentially connected with the time of expectation of Christ’s parousia in connection with our remembrance of Christ’s Easter (Heb 13:8). We live in hope because Jesus himself has promised his coming (Rev 22, 7, 20). We respond to such promise with maranatha “Our Lord, come!” (1 Cor 16:22).

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Christian hope resides in clarifying and actualizing what we receive as a gift of God through God’s grace of justification and reconciliation. When this aspect is left behind, spes naturalis (the natural hope of humanity) is correlatively connected with Christian hope. In other words, general hope replaces specific hope in a biblical contour. Theologia naturalis is integrated in light of the prolepsis or future theologia gloriae, becoming a presupposition of the future goal of Christian hope. Theologia naturalis is conceptualized as an “anticipation of the as yet unattained future in which God is all in all.” 52 Subsequently, the principle of spes quarens intellectum (hope seeks understanding) makes a Christian message of hope into the genitive theology that absolutizes a partial aspect (hope) of the Christian message. This project integrates an extra-biblical preunderstanding of a utopian hope, but is not concerned with a sociocritical and analytical project of the human historical life situation. Moltmann argues that in light of hope, faith in the knowledge of Christ must be relativized, remaining anticipatory and fragmentary. “Thus knowledge of Christ becomes anticipatory, provisional and fragmentary knowledge of his future, of what he will be.” 53 Faith in the grace of Jesus Christ becomes uncertain, because Christian hope in God’s promise uncovers “all thinking in history to be eschatologically oriented and eschatologcally stamped as provisional.” 54 Unlike a theology of hope or prolepsis, I maintain that Christian hope without faith and love remains vulnerable to a reality of simul peccator et justus in human and social life. The principle of hope in the optimistic sense undermines the unity of God’s Word of grace and repentance. For this reason, it is important that we ground Christian eschatology in the Word of God by seeking intellectus fidei, spei, et charitas (understanding faith, hope, and love) in an integrative way. An eschatological dimension of the Word of God integrates human anticipation of what is to come through Christ’s Easter appearance and his future. The theological epistemology—Verbum Dei, not spes, quaerens intellectum (the Word of God, not the hope, seeks understanding)—involves human social history and engages in human concrete, historical experience, and discourse. The church lives by God’s mission of word-event, which is an eschatological gift in the form of proclamation and sacraments. The proclaimed word (viva vox evangelii) goes ahead of us and opens the future. Evangelization of the Word of God as the source of past, present, and future retains the promise of an eschatological and universal future, moving forward toward God’s eschatological coming. God’s Word as mission is the f lower bud of Christian hope that will be fulfilled in the eschatological consummation of what God has promised in Israel and Christ for all. God’s Word of Justification and Christian Hope The Church as sanctorum communio can be characterized in terms of the existence of a double dimension. The church as sinner lives in a sinful

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reality, but as righteous it lives in hope (Rom 4:7). God’s grace integrates human existence in this double dimension into the future of God. Luther’s theology of justification should be understood as a theology of the Word of God articulating and galvanizing God’s future in an eschatological sense. Guided by the Word and the Spirit, the church is in service to God’s Word as mission in the present sociohistorical context rather than occupied with an interest in the principle of hope or selftriumphalism. In the reconstruction of an eschatological dimension of God’s mission as word-event, we begin with the Word of God through the covenant with Israel and the grace of justification and reconciliation of Christ for all. Here the resurrection of the crucified confirms the promise of God for Israel and becomes the driving force for a Christian expectation of the God of promise that is to come. Human life is conditioned and inf luenced in sociohistorical correlates and life situations rather than unilaterally constructed in the expectation of a future resurrection. Thus, a critical analysis of sociohistorical correlates with God’s word-event in the public sphere and life situation becomes an indispensable part of characterizing God’s word as missional event. Christ as the end of the law (Rom 10:4) is also the fulfillment and confirmation of the law, constituting the solidarity of God’s covenant between Israel and the church. Christ, for the sake of the truth of God, confirms the promises made unto the patriarchs (Rom 15:8). Covenant and reconciliation stand in the common hope of God’s eschatology. The eschatological theology of God’s mission as word-event is performed through the grace of justification and reconciliation. It is interconnected with theologia crucis and theologia vitae. In this light, we distinguish ourselves from a pan-eschatological vision that transposes and dissolves everything temporal and particular into the eschatological totalization of the general resurrection of all. Presentative, social-existential eschatology is based on the grace of justification and reconciliation. It does not necessarily contradict the grace of the final Immanuel in the eschatological coming of God. The eschaton as God’s coming and arrival does not make the grace of justification (faith) and reconciliation (love) fragmentary and provisional. Faith and love rejoice in hopeful expectation of what is to come, joyously participating in an eschatological–transformative dimension of God’s mission as wordevent in our present history. God’s being is in becoming through Christ and the Spirit in light of God’s coming. The God of hope is the God of Israel who is the source of the grace of justification and reconciliation so that the coming God promised in the Word of God will fulfill and confirm covenant and reconciliation in the transformation of the world. A missiology of word-event in a Trinitarian–eschatological configuration distinguishes itself from adventus eschatology in the proleptic expectation that renders the embodiment of Christ in the f lesh and the present presence of Christ in the Spirit only provisional and fragmentary. There

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is no coming of God without God’s promise in the past and God’s grace of justification and reconciliation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for all. God’s mission as word-event breaking into our present reality is established analogically and discursively in our public sphere by challenging the reality of injustice and violence. Our participation in God’s word mission makes our hope concrete, reliable, and publically connected and engaged. We rejoice in our participation in promissio and missio Dei grounded in the grace of justification and reconciliation that stands in expectation of God’s newness. God’s Novum is realized analogically and irregularly here and now in our missional activity and participation in God’s missional history. The biblical witness to the grace of justification and reconciliation in the form of presentative, social-existential eschatology is qualified to retain its reality and validity from the eschatological coming of God. The two forms of biblical eschatology, both presentative and eschatological, are mutually attested. Presentative eschatology grounded in God’s grace of justification upholds our creative participation in God’s reconciliation (missional discipleship) and invites us to the expectation of God’s eschatological newness. Christian mission invites the ungodly to reconciliation with God (II Cor 5:18ff ) and turns God’s promissio and missio to Abraham and the prophetic eschatology of Isaiah (Isa 2.1–4; 25. 6–8; 45.18–25; 60.1–22). The theology of the cross in Paul’s view entails a self-explicating future in itself; namely an eschatological event rather than simply an historical event. This entails a character of the eschatologia crucis. The character of the future in Paul’s concept of the Word of the cross comes from the event of the Spirit that is already an event in the Word of the cross. God has revealed the life, death, and resurrection of Christ to us through the Spirit. Theologia crucis speaks of the crucified Jesus whom God made into the power of God (1 Cor 1:18), raising him from the dead. In Jesus’ farewell sermon ( John 14:7) Jesus claims that his disciples have seen God. The eschatological expansion of God’s salvific narrative and drama with humanity has already begun in Jesus. Paul maintains that it begins in the operation of the Spirit. The freedom that the Spirit brings enables a premirroring of the future of God in eschatological openness (2 Cor 3:17–18). According to Rev 21:22, God and the Lamb are the temple in the midst of the new city. God opens God’s self in the Hebrew biblical-Trinitarian sense: in the name of the Lord (adonai), in the name of God (elohim), and in the name of pantocrator (zebaoth).In eschatological perspective, theologia crucis is interwoven with the eschatological Lamb of God in which a presentative eschatology is interconnected with the eschatological coming of God. God as the Subject of God’s speaking opens the Trinitarian life to covenantal-eschatological history.

CH A P T E R

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A Theology of Word-Event and Reformation

In the context of the Global South or East we perceive an endeavor to theologize in one’s own particular life setting. This emerging paradigm of theology in a non-Western context deeply challenges a fatal mistake of Christian mission in the past. In the name of evangelism and mission an alliance between the throne and the altar was maintained from the time of the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores in the sixteenth century and in subsequent centuries.1 Today, the postmodern suspicion or “incredulity toward metanarratives” 2 demonstrates a radical hermeneutic of doubt and refusal, revealing and denouncing the interplay between power and knowledge in politics, religious institutions, and social sciences. In the midst of the postmodern-pluralistic challenge it is an audacious task to hermeneutically retrieve the Reformation contribution to God’s mission as word-event in an age of World Christianity. David Bosch challenges the Reformation theology of justification from a missional perspective. According to Bosch, Luther’s discovery of justification remains foundational for the development of a Christian theology of mission. However, Bosch quickly adds that Luther’s teaching of justification maintains an ambivalent attitude toward mission because the teaching of justification paralyzes missionary efforts and passion by remaining quietist and individualistic.3 In contrast to Bosch’s ambivalent evaluation, this chapter will assert that Luther is a theologian of God’s word-event, which is foundational for his teaching of justification and its missional implications. This theology of wordevent needs to be actualized in the renewal of Jewish-Christian relationship. We shall be concerned with exploring Luther’s theological contribution to God’s mission as word-event, along with discussing public issues of political economy. It also includes preservation of creation and culture, while articulating human experience of the charismatic renewal in faith journey. Martin Luther and God’s Word-Event For Luther God’s word-event is not only present in the ecclesial and confessional sphere, but is also working in the world. “God has to speak in

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a different way. If God opens the mouth, and lets a word go forward, so it works . . . Also God has grasped, with this short word, the whole of the gospel and kingdom of Christ, so that nobody can eradicate it . . .” 4 We are able to believe God when God binds God’s Word to us through the Spirit. It is God’s word-event that makes belief possible. Thus, faith is the event in which God comes to us in the presence of the Spirit.5 From the perspective of God’s word-event, Luther proposes in his “Smalcald Articles” (1537) the fifth form of the gospel: that is, mutual conversation and consolation of brothers and sisters.6 This refers to an objective and necessary form of the gospel alongside preaching, the sacrament, and the ecclesial office. Luther’s theology of word-event corresponds to an important explanation of Hebrews 1:1 according to which “God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets.” In Luther’s understanding of the gospel, the Word of God can be defined and determined by its effect. Here, the full historicity of the speech and action of God is adequate in the sense of Heb 1:1. The Word of God in Jesus Christ cannot be understood apart from God’s word-event throughout all the ages in their plural horizons of effect. God’s Word points to an open event in the sense of mutual conversation and consolation of brothers and sisters. Luther grounds his concept of the fifth form of the gospel on Mt 18: 20, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” God’s word-event takes place in the gospel which is the living voice (viva vox evangeli) of God. The gospel should be cried out and exulted. Scripture is a witness to the Word of God, while Jesus Christ as the Word of God is at the heart of Scripture. This refers to Luther’s concept of a “canon within the canon.” Lutheran confessional theology (as norma normata) witnesses to this subject matter of the gospel (norma normans) as it relates to our discipleship for God’s mission of viva vox evangelii and evangelization. Regarding the unity of the Word of God, Luther contends that we cannot understand the truth of the Word of God apart from proclamation (with the mouth), illumination of the Spirit (in the heart), and the Scripture. What is uttered vocaliter by the voice has to be illumined and understood vitaliter in the heart through the Holy Spirit.7 Subsequently, the criterion to test every scripture is undertaken in light of the hermeneutical principle—whether it sets forth Christ or not. The true touchstone for testing all scriptures lies in discovering whether they emphasize the prominence of Christ or not. “All Scripture sets forth Christ.” 8 This perspective maintains that Scripture is the prophetic word in the Old Testament. The New Testament is the living and oral proclamation that opens up the prophetic word closed in its written form. A proclamation of the gospel should be done publicly with a living voice. The New Testament is proclaimed in the living voice to be heard everywhere in the world.9 Luther contends that gospel simply means a preaching and loud crying out of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. In oral preaching, lively word and

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voice ring out in the whole world so that it may be everywhere heard as a loud crying out in the public sphere. Luther’s definition of the gospel as viva vox evangelii does include the possibility and inevitability of arguments and disputes as the true understanding of the gospel is considered.10 This perspective of a language event becomes foundational for Luther’s evangelizing mission of the Word of God. Viva vox evangelii is a charged human voice in human words. Evangelical address leads to active knowledge and discipleship for diakonia in the public sphere. Furthermore, all Scripture receives its light from the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Luther’s hermeneutical view of Scripture integrates the verbal inspiration (living, internal testimony of the Spirit in Scripture) to his ref lection of a divine mystery that we cannot grasp. God cannot be mastered or conceived, because human beings live on earth.11 God is known through God’s historical act in Jesus Christ. There is hermeneutically important assertion that to have the gospel without understanding is to have no gospel. To have the Scripture without knowledge of Christ is to have no Scripture. It is hard to maintain the gospel without language.12 Luther as the theologian of language event (Sprachereignis) becomes inf luential for furthering theological hermeneutic. The written text (handed down by tradition with historical data) and the spoken proclamation (faith) are intimately interwoven.13 If understanding becomes possible in a hermeneutical sense through language,14 the Word of God in the presence of the Holy Spirit opens up and brings human existence into an encounter with the reality of God’s word-event toward the world. This line of thought highlights Luther’s ability to encourage us to develop a missiology of word-event in engagement with human life in the public sphere of multicultural society. Hermeneutic of Law and Gospel As Gerhard Ebeling notes, a teaching of justification in the language of simul justus et peccator (righteous and a sinner at the same time) characterizes Luther’s way of speaking of God in both an all-embracing and an exclusive way. The particularity of the gospel (particula exclusiva) in Jesus Christ can be clarified and made more precise through the universality of the gospel (particula inclusiva).15 It is essential to understand Luther’s principle of law and gospel in light of the unity of the Word of God. In several of Luther’s writings he offers extraordinary insights into the relationship between law and gospel. Luther reads Moses in agreement with the natural law. Moses is read for the sake of the promise about Christ, while relating him to beautiful examples of faith, love, and the cross.16 Thus Luther’s hermeneutic is undertaken with regard to the law in a more positive way than an antithetical way. In the Preface to the Old Testament (1523, revised 1545) we notice that Luther conceptualizes the law as not only having an accusatory function, but also

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involving the gratitude of the justified for God’s grace in the presence of the Holy Spirit. This hermeneutic of law and gospel facilitates further thought about the implications of the natural realm for the grace of Jesus Christ. There are texts on the natural knowledge of God in the New Testament. According to Romans 1:20–22 and 2:12–16, the pagans have knowledge of the existence of God. Likewise, in Luther’s Roman lectures of 1516–17 he considers the general knowledge of God from creation in Romans 1:19–20 and affirms that the divine law at creation was written on the human heart according to Romans 2:15. This general knowledge is connected with Luther’s commentary on God’s universal covenant with Noah. Luther advocates the motherly compassion of God for wretched people in a universal sense.17 Given the particular inclusive orientation of St. Paul and the Hebrew Bible, it is of striking importance to bring up Luther’s provocative ref lection on God’s irregular grace to Ishmael and his descendents. As Luther argues, “for the expulsion does not mean that Ishmael should be utterly excluded from the kingdom of God . . . The descendents of Ishmael also joined the church of Abraham and became heirs of the promise, not by reason of a right but because of irregular grace.” 18 Subsequently, Lutheran dogmatic theology affirms a Lutheran understanding of the universality of God’s call in an extraordinary way. God “adopted all kinds of expedients whereby the call afterwards could reach nations and individuals.” 19 Luther once characterized Abraham as the cardinal example of evangelical life led by God’s justifying grace. In Luther’s exposition of Abraham, we also encounter his passionate argument for Ishmael. Genesis 12 contains a comprehensive blessing story for the descendents of Abraham. We are aware of God’s sympathy in Genesis for Hagar and Ishmael. The God of Abraham hears the outcry of the oppressed Hagar, who cries out today in the voice of the victimized and the marginalized in Palestine. The God who elects Israel is also the advocate for Ishmael, Hagar, and poor Lazarus. Luther’s ref lections on Abraham and Ishmael offer thought-provoking insight into the development of a theology of word-event with emphasis on God’s grace of justification and theologia crucis for the Lazarus-minjung who are burdened by the sin of the powerful of the globe.20 Excursus: Luther’s View on the Hebrew Bible The nationalistic misuse of Luther was justified through his later antiJewish writings. Julius Streicher, the infamous “Jew devourer” of the Third Reich, justified himself at his indictment for a Jewish massacre in the international court in the year of 1946 on the basis of the theological authority of Luther. His advocation was based on Luther’s later writing, “On the Jews and Their Lies.” Kristallnacht (“Night of the Broken Glass”), the pogrom of the Jewish people, took place on Luther’s birthday

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(November 10, 1938). Luther’s language of brutality and coarseness against the Jews in his later writings was dormant in German history until the time of National Socialism. The Jews remain a stumbling block for Luther’s theology.21 From the Jewish side, Albert Friedlander makes the accusation that there is no place for Judaism in Luther’s understanding of the Jews. Luther’s early attitude toward the Jews, although friendly, retained his desire for the conversion of the Jews to Christ. In his statement “we are brothers in the Bible,” and in his exaltation of the Jews who came back to the faith of the prophets and patriarchs, Luther opened a hope for the Jews, but not actually for Judaism. Friedlander argues that Luther despises Jewish faith as unfaith, and denounces it as the lies of the devil.22 In contrast to Friedlander, Pincas Lapide, a Jewish scholar, evaluates Luther’s early ref lections on the Jews in a different manner. Lapide contends that Luther in his Reformation breakthrough articulated the importance of the Hebrew Bible and emphasized a return to the original Hebrew text. The inseparable unity of the scriptures is of special importance because Luther started from the unity of the Word of God. Insofar as Luther emphasizes that word and deed are one in God, he emphasizes the Hebrew word dabar which is expressed as “verbum facere” (to do the Word).” 23 Starting from the meaning of zedaka (righteousness), Luther subsequently finds the unity of grace and life to be important in terms of concepts of righteousness and justification. Criticizing the translation of Torah as law, Luther comes to the realization that Torah in the Latin term “instructio” and “doctrina” (denoting command and promise) must be understood in the Jewish sense of the Bible as divine instruction.24 If Torah means teaching, instruction, and direction, it is not much different from Martin Buber’s translation of it as directive instruction. Luther’s hermeneutical principle cannot be understood properly without reference to his audacious ref lection on Christ in the Hebrew Bible. His Hebrew line of thought deserves careful attention in this regard. In his exposition of the Decalogue (in The Small Catechism), Luther says that we should fear, love, and trust God above all things.25 God promises grace and all good things to those who keep such commands. Therefore, we should love and trust God and act willingly according to God’s command. In his exposition of Paul’s typology in 1 Cor 10, Luther affirms the unity of the God of Israel with Jesus Christ. God, who gives Moses the Decalogue on Sinai, speaks: “I am the Lord who leads you out of Egypt,” and “you shall have no other gods for me.” This God, as a matter of fact, is Jesus of Nazareth who died on the cross for us.26 Therefore, Luther interprets the entire history of Israel in the Hebrew Bible as a history of Christ. Christ in the Exodus event is the basis for Luther to establish a dialogical relationship between the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Bible. Luther never mythologizes the locus of the Hebrew Bible or the law for the sake of the gospel. He does not place the law and the gospel in antithetical positions. Christ in Exodus, who is God in the

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Hebrew Bible, can be regarded as the hermeneutical basis for Luther’s internal dialog with the Jewish people. Luther comprehends the whole history of the Hebrew Bible as Christ history. He conceptualizes the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Bible in a dialogical and dialectical sense. In speaking of the unity between the two Testaments, there is a dialogical relationship of witnessing to the unity of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the Father of Jesus Christ. In a letter written to Justus Jonas ( June 30, 1530), while staying in Colburg, Luther reported that he had become a new student of the Decalogue. He begins to find a new way to define the relationship between the Decalogue and the Gospel. Luther articulates this idea in scholastic language. The Decalogue is the dialectic of the Gospel and the Gospel is the rhetoric of the Decalogue. In other words, the Decalogue is the reason-ref lecting ground of the Gospel. Conversely, the Gospel is the assertion, the art of language, the rhetoric of the Decalogue.27 The law outlines the plan of what the gospel reveals. What is revealed in Christ is anchored in the law. Luther’s language of dialectic and rhetoric seems close to the soteriological-historical concept of promise and fulfillment. Christ has the whole of Moses in himself, but Moses does not have the whole of Christ. Liberating Moses from Jewish external law and integrating him into natural reason, Luther demonstrates the Christological substance of Moses. The reason of Moses belongs to the dialectic of Christ; in other words, this is a reason-ref lecting of the Gospel. The Gospel is the rhetoric of the Decalogue, namely the language of Moses-reason. From this perspective, Luther includes Moses in Christ. The Decalogue is for Luther the calendar of all things, giving divine voice to all. God’s calling in Moses is the reason and dialectic of the language of the Gospel. Reason is pregiven in Moses to us. In the Preface to the Old Testament (1523, revised 1545),28 Luther gives special regard to the Old Testament as “the very words, works, judgments, and deeds of the majesty, power, and wisdom of the most high God.” That is, it is “the swaddling cloths and the manger in which Christ lies.” 29 The law is not only conceptualized as having an accusatory function, but it also involves the gratitude of the justified for the grace of Christ. The New Testament contains laws and commandments, along with the teachings about grace. Similarly in the Old Testament there are, beside the laws, certain promises and words of grace. Thereby the holy fathers and prophets were kept in the faith of Christ.30 It is certain that Luther distinguishes the Hebrew Bible from the Greek Bible. But such a distinction is not identical with separation without any further ado. There is an analogy between the faith of the holy fathers, the prophets, and the Christian faith. This analogy makes their faith exemplary for Christians. There is no word in the New Testament that does not ref lect behind itself into the Old.31 Luther deals with the Hebrew Bible—Genesis, Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, Isaiah, and the minor

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prophets—listing them in the order of the canon. Genesis is “an exceedingly evangelical book.” 32 The laws are of three kinds: laws for protection against the wicked, laws for instruction, and finally laws about faith and love. All laws aim at faith and love, and every law of God is good and right (Rom 7:7–16). God is reconciled in Christ and the human heart begins to feel kindly toward the law. Through the grace of Christ our heart has become good, loving the law and satisfying it.33 In “How Christians Should Regard Moses” (1525), Luther adds a third kingdom to his two: a kingdom for the Jews. Between the world and the church still another has been placed in the middle, half spiritual, and half temporal. This middle kingdom is made up of the Jews and the laws and ceremonies are what make it a kingdom. These prescribe their conduct toward God and humanity.34 Thus, Luther was prepared to improve and deepen his concept of two kingdoms with respect to the historic uniqueness and special nature of Judaism into a “three kingdom” concept. In ref lecting on the Christian hermeneutical relationship with Moses, Luther experimented with the following thoughts: another kingdom, half spiritual and half worldly, is grasped by the Jews with the law and with external ceremonies and rituals. It shows how they should conduct themselves before God and humankind with their behavior in the world. From this perspective, we are aware that Luther is willing to learn from Moses as a moral teacher, rather than as a lawgiver. Luther allows space for Judaism as a moral religion without forcing it to be assimilated into the Christian system. The kingdom that encompasses the Jews remains as a kingdom of Jewish service before and toward the world. Therefore, the kingdom has a specifically Jewish sending and purpose that is neither in the temporal nor in the spiritual realm of God. Rather it is set in the middle. As an intermediary, Moses belongs only to the Jewish people, not to the Gentiles. This is Luther’s “No” to Moses. Nevertheless, Luther takes seriously the most internal core of the Torah, the Decalogue, for Christian faith. This is Luther’s “Yes” to Moses. The natural (or moral) law is written onto the hearts of the Gentiles. The Gentiles follow Moses as the teacher of God’s Word although they do not follow him as the lawgiver.35 The Torah as halacha (the collective body of Jewish religious law, including biblical law—the 613 mizvot—and later Talmudic and rabbinic law) pertains to the Jews, not the Gentiles, because Christ is the end of the law. However, the Torah as life instruction pertains to us as a Christian in that Christ is the fulfillment and confirmation of the law. This dimension refers to the laws regarding faith and love. It is certain that Luther identifies faith in the Hebrew Bible with the Christian faith. He speaks of the faith of the Hebrew Bible even without mentioning the name of Christ. In the first sentence of the Decalogue the whole of Scripture is implicitly summarized. The whole of faith is explained in The Large Catechism: This commandment intends seeking to require true faith and confidence of the heart, f lying straight to the one true God and clinging to him alone.36

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Accordingly, Luther’s concept of the canon within the canon is articulated in the statement, “Therefore, if the adversaries press the Scriptures against Christ, we urge Christ against the Scriptures.” 37 Luther’s hermeneutics of “what drives Christ” can be heard in his preface to the book of James. This principle is a criterion for all books, including those in the Greek Bible. It implies that the Gospel is the clear summary of the Hebrew Bible.38 In his exegetical work, “what drives Christ” retains a spectrum of horizons; the Hebrew Bible is not simply Christianized, but the faith of the holy fathers in the Hebrew Bible can be interpreted as the Christian faith per se. By certain promises and words of grace in the Hebrew Bible the holy fathers and prophets, while under the law, were kept in the faith of Christ.39 Luther argues that the Hebrew Bible becomes clearer and more illuminating if we look behind it as the foundation of the Gospel.40 Luther regards the Hebrew Bible as the first Testament, so he attempts to help Christians understand its meaning and significance for the Christian faith and the church. The Greek Bible was translated and published in September 1522, and the five books of Moses followed in July 1523. In 1523 Luther began to preach on the books of Moses in lectio continua in the city church of Wittenberg. On 18 September 1524, Luther ended this series of sermons, and on 2 October he began to interpret Exodus until 1527. He preached on Leviticus from 1527 to 1528. He continually preached expositions on Numbers, and he did 18 sermons about Deuteronomy (up to Chapter 9) in the year of 1529.41 He preached that the Word of God has effect and is fully in operation; that creation and preservation are summarized in their unity through the concept of the always-active Word of God. For Luther the Word of God is in action. The Word of God is efficacious and it does what it promises. Thus God’s Word is God’s deed and event. Whether command or promise, accusation or affirmation, the Word of God is in unity and action. It makes us alive and here right faith arises. The word of the covenant and the promise of salvation are the same word that is revealed in Jesus Christ. Luther’s mission to the Jews is based on his recommendation that the Jews return to the faith of their fathers, the prophets, and patriarchs in the Hebrew Bible. The Jews are of the lineage of Christ, being blood relatives, cousins, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, while we Christians are aliens and in-laws. “The Jews are actually nearer to Christ than we are.” 42 In faithfulness to dabar as God’s act-word, Luther understands the relationship between law and gospel. In his Preface to the Old Testament, for Luther “the chief teaching of the New Testament is really the proclamation of grace and peace through the forgiveness of sins in Christ.” Likewise the chief teaching of the Old Testament is really the teaching of laws, the showing up of sin, and the demanding of good.43 The Greek Bible teaches that the law is fulfilled. Like Paul, Luther says that the law in a moral and ethical sense is not eradicated, but it is

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good and must be fulfilled. The Torah is more comprehensive than the law. In his allegorical interpretation of Exodus 15, Luther understands the wooden stick as pointing to the Gospel. The law works joy. Luther could preach about joy in the law. It is Christian freedom. If the law does not change itself, but if the humans change themselves, then this law become joyous and loving. Thus we become legis amatores, who love the law in heart.44 Luther was among the legis amatores (lovers of the sacred law of the scripture) through God’s grace! Moses is the Sachsenspiegel (Saxon code of law) for the Jews. Therefore, the Gentiles are not obligated to obey Moses. Nevertheless, the natural law written in the hearts of the Gentiles (Rom 2:14–15, 3:22) bears no distinction from the commandments of Moses. The Gentile does not hold the other commandments of Moses’, which are not implanted in their hearts. What Luther points out as the best things in Moses is “the promises and pledges of God about Christ.” 45 This does not come from the law written in the heart, but from what the Gospel proclaims. Excellent and comforting promises are recorded in Moses. In Moses the promises of God sustain faith.46 We should first read Moses because he agrees with natural law and because the Ten Commandments are a mirror for replicating our lives before God and in the presence of the fellow humans. Next, we read Moses for the sake of the promises about Christ. Finally, we read Moses for the beautiful examples of faith, love, and the cross. This applies to the Gospel also. In Moses there is a fine order, a joy about the Gospel of Christ. Having considered this, we may talk about evangelical rejoicing in Torah. In Luther’s view, Moses is a well of all wisdom and understanding. From it has sprung all that the prophets knew and said. Even the Greek Testament f lows out of the Torah and is grounded in it.47 As we already saw, the Gospel is not essentially the Scripture, rather it is the oral, living Word to which the Scripture bears witness. Christ himself never wrote his teaching in the Scripture, but he has spoken. The Gospel, called good news or proclamation, is carried out in speech.48 The Gospel as the oral cry can be sung and spoken in a joyous way. Luther argues that the Gospel means the oral cry of the grace and mercy of God, a living Word and voice that is echoed in the entire world.49 In sum, the “Bible” for Luther is essentially the Hebrew Bible, while the Greek Bible is understood as the living voice of God.50 This train of thought is obvious in Kirchenpostille of 1522, in his Sermon on Peter (1523), and in his Preface to the New Testament of 1546. According to Luther’s lecture on Deuteronomy, the synagog was born first. Christ, the apostles, and the Word come from the Jews, not from heathens. John the Evangelist says that salvation comes from the Jews ( John 4: 22). Therefore, today people should not despise the Jews. The Jews became the first Christians and God’s speech was promised to them. Hatred toward the Jews is not a Christian teaching, nor does it have anything to do with Christian life.

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In his Table Talk, Luther says that if he were younger he would learn the Hebrew language. Without understanding the Hebrew language, one cannot understand Scripture rightly. Although the Greek Bible is written in Greek, it speaks about Hebraism and Hebrew manners. Therefore Luther says that the Hebrew drinks from the spring source; but the Greek from water that f lows from the source. The Latin drinks from the puddles.51 Given this fact, it is pivotal to consider Luther’s understanding of the Gospel in a Hebrew manner. As we already stated, in The Smalcald Articles Luther presents the five forms of the gospel, in which communal colloquium (mutual conversation) and comfort of sisters and brothers belong alongside preaching, the sacraments, and the ecclesial office. Luther’s provocative ref lection of the Gospel corresponds to his important explanation of Hebrews 1:1. The Hebrew Bible, like the Greek Bible, is regarded as a historical development of God’s word. Luther’s fifth form of the Gospel is appropriate for the historical effect of God’s word in action. God’s speech event is not merely fixed or conceptualized in an abstract manner, but takes place in an ongoing and open manner. Luther bases his fifth form of the gospel on Matt 18:20, which corresponds to 1 Sam 20:23; the Lord is living between you and me. God’s Word can be understood interpersonally, having an authority located in mutual conversation in the midst of the public sphere. Luther adds the consolation of brothers and sisters, explaining it as a supplementary characteristic of God’s Word. Based on the dialogical presence of God in Jesus Christ by the Spirit, Luther thinks of the comforting aspect of the Gospel in a pastoral and practical sense. Luther is portrayed as a theologian of colloquium and mutual conversation, listening attentively to God’s word-event in the biblical narrative of the dabar and Logos. Luther’s writing—“That Jesus Christ Was a Born Jew”—highlights his attitude towards the Jews: “Since they dealt with us Gentiles in such brotherly fashion, we in our turn ought to treat the Jews in a brotherly manner . . . We must receive them cordially, and permit them to trade and work with us, that they may have occasion and opportunity to associate with us, hear our Christian teaching, and witness our Christian life.” 52 In discovering the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish roots of Christianity, Luther was accused by his enemies of being a Judaiser. In 1524, Rome branded Luther as a semi-Judaeus. However, in his later writings, Luther’s sharp criticism of the Jews was used to support the brutal pogrom of the Jews under National Socialism. After the Shoah, the “Golgotha of Our Day,” Lutherans need to hermeneutically retrieve an orientation toward a “pro-Hebrew Bible” Luther if they are to attempt the renewal of a relationship with the Jews. This retrieval should, in engagement with the Jewish community, develop Luther’s ref lections on the Jewishness of Jesus, the Jewish roots of Christianity, and the importance of the Hebrew language for the understanding of the Greek Bible. In this regard, it is noteworthy to actualize and contextualize Luther’s understanding of the

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Gospel in terms of mutual colloquium in conversation with the Jewish people as brothers and sisters in the Bible. Jesus of Nazareth as a Jew and the “mirror of the fatherly heart of God” (Martin Luther) cannot be properly understood without the people of Israel, just as Christ cannot be conceived of without his church and people. If Jesus Christ is the fulfiller of the law, then fulfilling means the Hebrew heqim, that is, establishing, or putting into effect. Jesus Christ comes with and through Israel to the Gentile people as the Lord of the world. Abraham is the consummate example of an evangelical life.53 His faithfulness to the promise of God is recognized and accepted in the sight of God in the same way that God accepts Christian faith in Jesus Christ. Abraham also appears to be a prefigure of the church when he embraces Ishmael and his descendents in terms of God’s irregular grace that is fully and completely revealed in Jesus Christ. This “different and still provocative” Luther is important for the future of Luther studies on our globe regarding the challenge of World Christianity. As a concluding remark, it is meaningful to consider Bonhoeffer’s statement as a further inspiration for the renewal of Jewish-Lutheran relations: “the Church confesses that she has witnessed the lawless application of brutal force, the physical and spiritual suffering of countless innocent people, oppression, hatred, and murder, and that she has not raised her voice on behalf of the victims and has not found ways to hasten to their aid. She is guilty of the deaths of the weakest and most defenseless brothers of Jesus Christ.” 54 God’s Word-Event in Creation and Culture The prophetic line of Luther’s thought that has just been examined must be an inspiration for the church to stand in public engagement with the multireligious reality of our society. In fact, Luther’s ref lection on the twofold reign of God in the three-fold life arrangement (politia, economia, and ecclesia) highlights God’s dynamic way of relating to each life sphere. This model has nothing to do with guaranteeing and establishing an independent order of creation (Schöpfungsordnung or Eigengesetzlichkeit). The independent order of creation refers to the serious mistake that the representatives of the neo-Lutheran movement attempted during the period of National Socialism in Germany. Luther’s theology of word-event marks an important aspect of his theology of justification as connected with creation in a particular and inclusive way. Luther boldly argues that pagans are more skilled than Christians since God subjects a great deal of goodness, reason, languages, riches, and dominions to the godless. In comparison to pagans, Christians seem to be mere children, fools, and beggars. Thus Luther audaciously praised the Turkish state and critiqued, with unparalleled frankness, Christian authorities.55 This view corresponds to Luke’s statement (Luke 16: 8f )

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in which “the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” It is helpful to consider Luther’s views on the relationship between God’s speech and human speech. The essence of imago Dei in a human lies in the fact that the human being utters words like God. God is a deus dicens, to whom a homo audiens corresponds. 56 Luther integrates the countless other gifts of creation in light of the Word of God because “nature was most lovely and altogether miraculous,” affording the fullest occasion for wonderment and beyond our understanding. To the degree that we are deaf to the lovely music of nature in God’s establishment and preservation of creation, our faith loses wonderment and gratitude for God’s goodness in creation. Thereby, Luther bemoans that “we have become deaf toward what Pythagoras aptly terms this wonderful and most lovely music coming from the harmony of the motion that is in the celestial spheres.” 57 God speaks to us through religious outsiders in an unexpected and provocative manner! This perspective includes an aesthetic dimension that combines the theology of the second article (justification) with that of the first article (creation). God’s irregular voice is meshed with the wonderful and most lovely music, which is in service to word-event. Interestingly enough, Luther conceptualizes all creatures as masks of God (larva Dei). God through creatures definitely speaks to us; working in the world of other religions and cultures. Religious outsiders as larva Dei can be seen as serving God’s communication with the world in an extraordinary and irregular way. God’s blessing is for all people, but few recognize that it is God who blesses. According to Luther “it is not said that God desires to convert everyone.” “All the grace is established through Christ so that no one is to boast.” 58 Subsequently, the Lutheran confessional teaching of justification refers to God’s initiative when it states “conversion to God is the work of God the Holy Spirit alone.” 59 This is an important insight for missiology of word-event in prophetic dialog with people of other faiths. In Lutheran dogmatic context, emphasis is given to the initiative of God’s word-event that is embedded within the concept of vocatio catholica. The universal call of God is extended equally to all. Christian mission is a discipleship that shares the universality of Christ’s Gospel explicitly with those who were already implicitly reached by God.60 In light of God’s reconciliation, Paul states that “. . . provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven” (Col 1:23). Given the relation between word-event and vocatio catholica, it is pivotal to reconsider the teaching of justification and the two kingdoms for the sake of God’s mission of viva vox evangelii, that accompanies those who are “the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled, in short . . . those who suffer.” 61 The theology of the cross does

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not negate God’s universal mission, but makes it more explicit and sober in matters of limitation and corruption in human life. Thus, the Lutheran theology of justification stands for the universal mission of the Gospel through Word and sacrament for the world. Grace of Justification and Economic Justice Within the framework of God’s two-fold dynamic reign, it is illuminating to discuss Luther’s teaching of justification in relation to economic justice. Those who are justified by faith in God through Christ enter into an active life. In the sphere of receiving God’s justifying grace, we remain passive, while in the sphere of the renewal of human life, the preservation of creation, and the reconstruction of the world we are called to become co-workers with God,62 that is, created co-workers. Given the dynamic relationship between the grace of justification and the human praxis of discipleship, it is challenging to consider Luther’s call to public responsibility in the area of economic life. Luther’s theology of justification has a relevance to diaconal discipleship in the public spheres of political and economic life. In naming diakonia as one of the nota ecclesiae, Luther advocates for the diakonia of universal priesthood. The teaching of a universal priesthood characterizes the life of justified Christians as a diaconal existence, taking God’s justifying grace and reconciliation into the public sphere. In Leisnig’s Order of the Common Chest (1523), Luther articulates pastoral care, preaching, prayer, and care for the body. The formation of a common chest in the communal and egalitarian sense is foundational to his concept of diaconal discipleship in the socioeconomic realm. It is salient to consider the relationship between Luther’s theology of the cross and diaconal discipleship, especially with regards to accompaniment and solidarity with those who are economically weaker and marginalized.63 In The Large Catechism Luther ref lects on God (in the first commandment) in connection with his ethical deliberation of economic justice (in the seventh commandment). Believing that mammon is the chief example of opposition to God, Luther advocates for the poor by denouncing the reality of the devouring capital process and system. Luther’s critique of mammon is based on God’s commandment: “You shall not steal.” This commandment becomes the driving force for his ethic of responsibility for the poor. Luther’s “theological” critique of Roman Catholicism was embedded with his “socioeconomic” critique of its structure and system. Charles V was dependent on the Fuggers. Thus, Luther ironically characterized his Catholic opponent John Eck as a “plutologian” (expert on wealth) rather than a theologian. Social economic justice is a vehicle for Luther to shape and characterize the essence and meaning of God’s justifying grace. This view is valid in today’s task of Christian mission and evangelization in the

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public sphere. Luther should be appreciated as a prophetic denouncer of the western neoliberal principle of capital accumulation and expansion in the process of economic globalization.64 Grace of Justification and Political Diakonia Luther’s teachings on theology and economic justice facilitate us to propose a better understanding of his political ethics. Luther was a theologian of resistance against the tyranny of his time. In deliberating the coming of God’s kingdom in the Lord’s Prayer, Luther writes against a fanatical attempt to establish God’s kingdom on earth through human rebellious action. On the other hand, Luther stands against the egotism of a salvation that is interested only in individual peace and joy, ignoring God’s lordship on earth. He articulates the distinction between law and gospel against a confounding attempt by the fanatics, while at the same time articulating nonseparation of law from gospel against antinomians. In a letter to Friedrich dated March 7, 1522, Luther wrote about his new discovery of political theology that dramatically changed his previous view. Spiritual tyranny of the Roman Church has become weak. God drives further, insofar as God works in Jerusalem and two kingdoms. Luther confesses that he has newly learned that not merely spiritual, but also worldly power must obey the Gospel. This obedience shows itself clearly in the story of the Bible.65 Luther grounds Christian freedom in the teaching of justification. The teaching of justification as liberation from the bondage of sin is an event and process that does not only concentrate on the relationship between God and human beings, but also includes human life in social public locations. This freedom has an aspect of sharp resistance against the ecclesial system that arranges and sanctions the tyranny of the church in ways that contradict the life of God’s people. For the sake of the freedom of the Gospel, Luther opposes the tyranny of the church but on the other hand he speaks out against the rebellion. He challenges his former colleagues and students who attempted to transform his theology of freedom into a theology of revolution without reservation. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore Luther’s fatal mistake during the Peasant’s war. Luther argues, “Let whoever can stab, smite, slay. If you die in doing it, good for you!” 66 His urging the princes to smite, slay, and destroy the rebellious peasants caused his reputation to suffer severely. It is important that we retain a critical distanciation from any oppressive tradition from Luther’s legacy. Be that as it may, there is a forward-looking face to Luther’s theological deliberation on the socioeconomic sphere. By hermeneutically retrieving this prophetic and progressive side of Luther, a well-deserved discussion of Luther’s political views can take place. For Luther, suffering can be understood as a form of political activity. When Luther spoke the often-disputed

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sentence during the peasant war, “suffering, suffering, cross, cross–this is the Christian right, no other,” 67 he was trying to classify the peasants’ fight as a political form of the church’s struggle rather than deny them any right to resist. Luther’s critique of systemic violence was no less angry than his critique of the rebellious. His radical criticism of both sides demonstrates that the only possible solution comes from God and the passing away of the whole world.68 In his Introduction to the Psalter (1531), Luther states that “there [in the whole Bible] you see into the heart of all the saints.” The humanity of the biblical authors and their limitations are not concealed, but actually uncovered and exposed to the readers. The authors, each with their own historical setting, speak as persons conditioned in the social-economic circumstances and competing interests of their time. The sociopolitical setting of all the saints in the Bible is conditioned by their time and place. The biblical narratives intentionally reveal God’s care for the poor, inviting the reader to use a socio-critical approach to the subject matter of Bible. This biblical investigation belongs to the prophetic dimension of biblical interpretation and hermeneutics.69 At this juncture, Hans J. Iwand argues that Luther’s teaching of justification implies an important concept of Deum justificare which means giving God justice. Luther’s teaching of justification cannot be properly understood apart from his concept of Deum justificare (the justification of God).70 Resistance is an essential part of characterizing God’s Word made f lesh, Christ Jesus. Luther demands that the church not make use of worldly instruments of coercion for spreading the Gospel, but put wholehearted trust in the Word of God. The preacher and the politician stand before God’s command and judgment.71 That being the case, the Word of God points to the new world of God, which stands against political and economic powers. We are born anew out of the Word of God, so we become a new creation. A theology of God’s word-event refers to divine promise and truth standing extra nos.72 So the human being must be created anew through the Word of God. God’s grace of justification is a re-creative act of God’s promise in Jesus Christ. In this regard it is important to heed Gerhard Forde’s insight into a Lutheran teaching of justification by faith in light of the language of living, dying, and freedom. The teaching of justification is a genuine expression of God’s word of life through the Gospel and the sacrament.73 The Word of God attacks unjust structures in the ordinance of the world by purifying them and creating space for new life in the public sphere. Luther’s exposition of the Magnificat is a great example of his theology from below. Spiritus Creator and the Charismatic Renewal of Life Luther’s theology of the third article (the Holy Spirit) in the Apostle’s Creed must be developed in connection with the first article (theology

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of God the Creator) and the second article (Christology) in a Trinitarian perspective. Luther describes the Spirit from a Trinitarian perspective. The doctrine of the Trinity is the sublime articulation of the majesty of God, that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three distinct persons. The trine God is by nature one true and genuine God, the Maker of heaven and earth.74 The word of justification is oriented eschatologically toward the new creation in a universal dimension through the work of the Holy Spirit. This does not contradict a theocentric-ecological reading of nature.75 God’s future can be experienced in true anticipation of God’s eschaton in the hope of God’s activity of making all things new. Therefore, eschatology is transformed through a new relationship with God, which has begun with the grace of justification. The Spirit of justification is the Spirit of creation, the Spirit of resurrection, and the Spirit of consummation who transforms all things in anticipation of a new heaven and a new earth.76 Accordingly, Luther’s teaching of the Spirit can be deepened in a Trinitarian-missional sense. All creatures are God’s masks and mummery whom God allows to work with God’s self. God otherwise can and does nothing without their help.77 God through the creative Spirit is present within all creatures, f lowing and pouring into them, filling all things.78 Luther’s sensitivity to the beauty of creation is especially significant for the development of a proenvironmental mission. Relating Christian faith to marvel, wonder, awe, and reverence, Luther deepens his ref lection on God’s mysterious presence in, with, and through all living creatures. A theology of creation cannot be properly conceptualized without reference to the Holy Spirit. God’s all embracing activity is mediated through the Spirit. God, as the Spirit, is present and at work in a two-fold way: universally and ecclesiologically. The Holy Spirit is among humans in a two-fold way. First through universal activity: the Spirit preserves them, as well as God’s other creatures. Second, the Holy Spirit is given from Christ to believers through Word and sacrament.79 Luther see God’s engagement in all creation in the fruits of and human service in the Spirit, because all things and all creatures are creation of God. The phrase Solo Spiritu Sancto (through the Holy Spirit alone)80 implies that God through the creative Spirit can be in all creatures collectively and in each one individually more profoundly and more intimately, encompassing all things and dwelling in all.81 It is certain that Luther did not lose sight of the other side of God. No single spatial preposition is sufficient to describe God’s transcendental presence permeating the cosmos in such a way that the divine presence is even in a grain of wheat. Luther’s ref lection on God’s freedom is connected with his “irregular,” provocative line of thought, which implies God’s relational transcendence with the world. On the other hand, the teaching of justification becomes a necessary prerequisite for thinking about participation in the divine nature. Luther’s

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statement in ipsa fide Christus adest (Christ present in faith) has a remarkably pneumatological horizon.82 The Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity has called us through this gift: enlightening us with the gift and sanctifying and keeping us in the true faith. Likewise, the Spirit calls all people, gathering and enlightening them. Thereby the Spirit makes holy the whole Christian church on earth, keeping it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith.83 Luther affirms in his Commentary on Galatians an internal testimony of the Holy Spirit in the experience of believers. In this light, his ref lection of the charismatic experience deserves special attention. As for the inner working of the Spirit, Luther accentuates faith and other gifts: “But when he is ‘swaddled’ in tongues and spiritual gifts, then he is called ‘gift,’ then he sanctifies and makes alive.” 84 There is no gainsaying that an experiential dimension of the Spirit in human life plays an important role. Nobody can receive the Word of God “from the Holy Spirit without experiencing, proving, and feeling it. In such experience the Holy Spirit instructs us as in His own school, outside of which nothing is learned but empty words and prattle.” 85 The outward function of the Holy Spirit (the word of the gospel and the material signs of the sacraments) does not contradict the inward function of the Spirit (faith and other gifts).86 In spite of his rejection of fanatics, Luther did not deny the inner operation of the Spirit. The resurrection of the crucified Christ sheds light on all Scripture. Luther understands the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible through the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. His teaching of justification can be seen through the Holy Spirit alone. It involves the regeneration and vivification of human life. The Holy Spirit works in an ongoing way, granting us gifts, power and a charismatic renewal of life through external means of grace, our prayer, and prophetic diakonia to the needy. In the sermon on Mark 16:17–18, we notice that Luther does not speak against the signs and wonders of the early church. If the original situation of the early church was updated, God could perform similar kinds of signs even today. The same power of the Spirit is still present in the church. “If it were necessary and conducive to the spreading of the Gospel, we could do easily the signs. . . . For Christ does not teach that Christians practice the spectacular, but he says they have the power and can do these things. And we have many such promises throughout the Scriptures.” 87 Accordingly, signs should be understood as a testimony to and public confirmation of the gospel. If it were necessary, such signs could now be performed. When these signs take place devils are cast out in Christ’s name and the sick are healed by prayer in Christ’s name so that all Christianity can see the power of the Gospel. Luther was known to have personally exercised prayer for the sick. A famous case is his prayer for Melanchthon when he was seriously ill. The Spirit works not only through the external means of word and sacrament, but also spontaneously in believers. In The Apology of the Augsburg

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Confession we read of a dialectical relation between the external and internal functions of the Spirit. The church is not only an association of external ties and rites, but it is also principally an association of faith and the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers.88 In “A Simple Way to Pray” (1535), Luther himself experienced a certain prayer of the Spirit. “The Holy Spirit himself preaches here, and one word of his sermon is far better than a thousand of our prayers. Many times I have learned more from one prayer than I might have learned from much reading and speculation.” 89 Between doctrinal confession and the human faith experience, the risen and present Christ works through the guidance of the Spirit so that the meaning of the Gospel comes to us as the living and powerful reality of Christ through word, sacraments, and the faith-experience. The Lutheran understanding of baptismal identity is relevant to the charismatic renewal of life because the church understands baptism in a progressive present sense. Christian union with Christ in the “happy exchange” includes a present experience of the gifts of the Spirit in the daily progress of spiritual renewal, which can be also understood as the actualization of baptismal grace. Luther’s understanding of spiritual baptism or daily baptism, after the sacrament of baptism has been performed, refers to that which the sacrament of baptism signifies, that is, spiritual birth and the increase of grace and righteousness until the last day.90 Grace of Justification and God’s Mission as Word-Event The true Christian witness to God’s mission lies in bearing witness to Jesus Christ and God’s reconciliation with the world through serving. Following Luther’s theology of the Word of God, Karl Barth once proposed his concept of God’s mission in a Trinitarian perspective. God, who loves in freedom, sent the Son and the Spirit. Christian mission expresses the divine sending forth of the self, sending the Son and the Holy Spirit to the world.91 Barth’s inf luence on missionary thinking began at the Tambaram meeting of the International Missionary Council (IMC, 1938) and at the Willingen Conference (1952). Barth advocates for the mission of the church in light of God’s election.92 Barth’s theology of mission in a predestination framework became a driving force for Dutch reformed theology to unilaterally promote God’s direct involvement in the world for the humanization or Shalom-ization of the whole of life. Johannes Hoekendijk argues that “where a liberation to a rightful humanization is taking place, one can conclude that the missio Dei, once again, has reached its goal.” 93 As a result, the world provides the agenda for the church. Here the doctrine of predestination becomes more compelling than Christology. The Gospel of God’s kingdom is not completely identical with the Gospel

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of Jesus Christ.94 George Vicedom argues against this unilateral view, proposing a holistic view of God’s mission in connection with the church and the world. Both the church and its mission have their source in the love of the triune God. However, God’s grace of justification should not be confounded with God’s universal reign in the world. A concept of God’s mission as word-event, seen in light of justification, discipleship, and diakonia, becomes a corrective to an election-oriented model of missio Dei. If the Word is to be properly proclaimed and the sacraments administered according to their institution, a congregation must emerge and an office must be present.95 The church lives in Word and sacrament and thereby in fellowship with the crucified and exalted Jesus Christ, who is also the Lord of the world. The church’s participation in God’s mission underlines our discipleship in promoting the universality of Christ’s Gospel. From a Reformation perspective, a theology of mission of word-event reframes and proposes Christian mission and prophetic diakonia in light of Christ’s justification and reconciliation. As Bonhoeffer states, “the body of Jesus Christ is united with humanity, the whole of humanity is accepted by God.” 96 Jesus Christ is the herald of justification, reconciliation, and final consummation of the world. In light of the resurrection of the crucified one, justification “as the last word” 97 points to what happens in the incarnation, cross, resurrection, and coming of Jesus Christ. In light of God’s reconciliation, Bonhoeffer retrieves Luther’s irregular and provocative statement: “The curses of the godless sometimes sound better in God’s ear than hallelujahs of the pious.” 98 The painful stories and even cursing voices of the godless are embraced by God’s narrative woven in compassion, forgiveness, and reconciliation. A balance between Christian uniqueness and openness to the world can be characterized and proposed in terms of a missiology of word-event that embraces the reality of multicultural diversity and a pluralistic way of life. A public theology of God’s mission in a justifying and reconciling horizon stems the tide of shallow relativism and pluralism visible in the circle of pluralist theologies of religion. A Christian mission of accompaniment in light of justification and reconciliation speaks out against the exploitation of the poor and the voiceless and listens to the physical and spiritual suffering of the innocent victims. This perspective characterizes the church as event through Word and sacraments—just as The Augsburg Confession states that the church is where and when God pleases.99 This view places Lutheran ecclesiology in a pneumatological framework. Luther’s understanding of the communion of saints gives a dynamic basis for the universal deaconhood of all believers. Christians receive a share of Christ’s priesthood through Word, sacrament, and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The universal priesthood (or the universal deaconhood) indicates the reality of the congregation as a community of the saints for the world. Here the sacrament of communion entails a prophetic-diaconal aspect engaging in the social reality of the

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poor and the innocent victim. Christ’s presence in the communion of the saints cannot be properly understood and implemented without Christ’s presence in those who suffer innocently in the world. As Luther provocatively contends, “Here your heart must go out in love and learn that this is a sacrament of love. As love and support are given you, you in turn must render love and support to Christ in his needy ones. You must feel with sorrow the entire dishonor done to Christ in his holy word, all the misery of Christendom, all the unjust suffering of the innocent, with which the world is everywhere filled to overf lowing. You must fight [resist: Widerstand leisten], work, pray—if you cannot do more—have heartfelt sympathy.” 100 Luther characterizes a sacramental understanding of social discipleship as a prophetic resistance, advocating for heartfelt sympathy for those who suffer innocently in the world. A theology of God’s mission as word-event corrects Bosch’s unfortunate characterization of a Lutheran ecclesiology without mission with its theology that is more scholastic than apostolic in orientation.101 Lutheran theology is already grounded in God’s word-event and Scripture, and is rich and multidimensional, giving a theological impulse toward a new missiology of God’s word-event par excellence in the context of World Christianity. An ecclesiology in Lutheran perspective is truly missional and diaconal by nature. Within the event of the church, the life of communio, koinonia, and diakonia stands in accompaniment with those who are marginalized, victimized, and voiceless, speaking frankly and audaciously in their favor and promoting their full humanity in the public sphere.

Engaging Karl Barth’s Theology of Missio Dei: Post–Shoah Theology in a Multireligious Globe The Mission of the Triune God Barth’s concept of missio Dei accentuates God’s act of sending the Son and the Spirit for the world. The church’s mission follows what God has done for the earth, humanity, and living creatures. The church emerges where God is pleased to have it emerge in God’s lordship and mercy. Mission and church are matters of divine purpose and confirmation. This has nothing to do with human goodwill or reparations. Hence, mission distances itself from religious or civilizing propaganda or an economic political ideology. Barth’s concept of missio Dei opposes the general notion that mission is “an instrument of religious or civilizing propaganda, or even an economic-political power play.” Where this is the case theology can be “a sport— maybe even an especially dangerous sport of arbitrary speculation and intellectual self-assuredness and self-importance.” 102 The church is missional by nature because it is grounded in the Trinitarian sending for the world. Barth develops his exposition of the Trinity at the very beginning

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of his discussion of the nature of revelation (CD I/1: 295–489). The root of the Trinity is expressed in the statement: God revealed God’s self as the Lord (CD I/1: 307). Now that revelation is God’s self-interpretation, the Trinity is structured as revealer, revelation, and revealedness. God’s being is known and explained only by God’s historical acts (esse sequitur operari). That Barth understands Jesus Christ in a Jewish environment and in connection to the Hebrew Bible is of special significance for his discussion of the Trinity. His understanding of triune God bears witness to God of Israel and the Father of Jesus Christ. Barth further defines God as the One who loves in freedom. If God reveals God’s self as the Lord, loving the church, humanity, and the world in God’s freedom, mission belongs to God’s Trinitarian history characterized by lordship, fellowship, love, and freedom. God’s sending forth of the Son and the Spirit is God’s act of love in freedom for the world. God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ, the electing God as well as the elect man, is the actual basis for God’s mission to the world. As David Bosch notices, Barth’s dogmatic theology assumes a missional contour. In his teaching of justification Barth includes the discussion of the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the gathering of the Christian community. In his teaching of sanctification he leads to a discussion of “The Holy Spirit and the Upbuilding of the Christian Community.” His teaching of vocation includes further discussion of “the Holy Spirit and the sending of the Christian Community.” In fact, Barth argues that “mission and theology will have to be inseparable at all cost.” 103 Church’s mission can be justified with respect to theological motive and purpose for missio Dei. The church’s mission can be justified as an act of obedience to God’s love for the world.104 Nevertheless, in Bosch’s interpretation of Karl Barth, there is a lacuna in the hermeneutical-political dimension when explicating Barth’s thought in reference to Martin Luther. Luther’s concept of viva vox evangelii is central to Barth’s hermeneutical view of the relationship between revelation and the Scripture. First we will deal with Barth’s missional thinking embedded within his teaching of reconciliation. Then, we will examine Barth’s Reformation-oriented hermeneutic in connection with his missiology. Mission in Witness to the Reconciliation of Jesus Christ Barth’s theological development of missio Dei finds its full expression in his doctrine of reconciliation (CD IV/3.2 §72 “The Holy Spirit and the Sending of the Christian Community”). Witness to Jesus Christ is at the center of his dogmatic-missional theology. Jesus Christ as the living Word of God is the eternal subject of the Gospel. This contradicts a missionary attempt at propagating and defending “any supposed Christian worldview.” 105 The Gospel is distorted and ossified when the Gospel is domesticated by the dominant philosophy or scientific method or hermeneutical principle. The church as the community of Jesus Christ must exist actively

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for the world. Witness to Jesus Christ contradicts a missionary attempt at disseminating, producing, propagating, and defending western culture and philosophical-religious worldview. The living Word of the living Jesus Christ is the eternal subject of the Gospel, which reveals itself anew and establishes fresh knowledge in every time and place. He is superior and sovereign over the church (CD IV/3.2: 821). In the theology of Karl Barth, God’s reconciliation with the world in Christ is closely interrelated to the nature of the church. Christ as the Reconciler of the world is the Lord of the church and the Lord of the world. In becoming incarnate and reconciling sinful humanity to God’s self, God has established an ontological connection with all humanity through Jesus Christ. By the Holy Spirit, humanity shares in the work of Christ and a church is created. Thus ecclesiology for the world is defined and conceptualized in light of Christology (CD IV/3:2 786). In speaking of God’s reconciliation, Barth has always in mind: first, the act of God in Christ, which is inclusive of all and second, the inevitable thrust to embrace the cosmic sphere of the earth. This inclusive-universal thrust reveals the ontological connection between Christ, the church, and the world. The future outpouring of God’s Spirit on all f lesh (Acts 2:17) is promised. The life of the church is located between Christ’s reconciliation and the final consummation of God’s kingdom. So the church as the living community of Jesus Christ exists in and for the world. The very nature of the church is a missionary one, based on the triune God, on Christ’s reconciliation and on the power of the Holy Spirit. Here church is defined as the community of vocation (CD IV/3.2: 682), the earthly historical form of Christ’s post–ascension existence, as it pertains to the church’s mandate: entrusting to it the ministry and mission of Christ’s prophetic Word (CD IV/3.2: 681). The true community of Jesus Christ is the community that God has sent out into the word, thus the church as such exists for the Word (CD IV/3.2: 768). God is the God of all the people in the world. In this light the true nature of the world can be understood. The church’s solidarity with the word is not its conformity to the world, because the church is different from the world. The church as salt and light for the world is given the light of life: Jesus Christ. The church’s solidarity with the word lies in its active recognition that Jesus Christ, as the Savior of the world, can exist in a worldly fashion (CD IV/3:2: 773–774), thus it is led into the world by the enlightening power of the Holy Spirit. Now that no one can evade what God has done in Christ for humanity, the church is under obligation to the world (John 4: 35), in solidarity with it, and in pledge and commitment to it without reservation (CD IV/3:2: 780, 789). Here Barth argues that all members of the church participate in the mission (CD IV/3. 2:784). The church, seen in its participation in God’s mission and Christ’s prophetic work, understands itself as a subsequent and provisional representation of the kingdom of God, which begins and is already revealed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The kingdom of God establishes the

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exclusive, all-penetrating, all-determining lordship of God in the Word and the Spirit in the whole sphere of creation (CD IV/3.2: 792). As the body of Christ, the current earthly historical form of Christ’s existence, the church is his likeness, analogously corresponding to the glory of Christ’s own image (CD IV/3.2: 793). Mission is the whole task of the church, not an optional work. Christian mission gains its prophetic profile from the reconciling action of God, which constitutes the controlling sense of mission history. This worldly reality of mission is now concealed and will be revealed only in the absolute future of the redeeming and consummating action of God. The reality of the eschaton is visible here and now through the reconciling action of God. (CD IV/3.2: 489). The sole purpose of mission is the proclamation of the Gospel (evangelization) and social diakonia (with respect to Wichern and Blumhardt) in the German Protestant context.106 The Christian is called to do ministerium Verbis divini (CD IV/3.2: 578) as a witness to the free grace of God, and is confronted by the self-witness of the living Jesus Christ and by the word of the cross. Sharing itself in solidarity with the suffering of Christ, the Christian mission in aff liction is a ref lection of an analogy to the suffering of Christ. This is the basis for the church’s solidarity with the world in aff liction and suffering (CD IV/3.2: 637). Evangelization is meant to attest to the goodness of God, because Jesus Christ is the goodness of God. Humanity is the object of God’s goodness. The Gospel is the good, glad tidings of Jesus Christ, who reveals the great and unconditional “Yes” of the eternal goodness of God to the world (CD IV/3. 2: 798–800, 805). Proclamation of the living Word of the living Lord contradicts appropriation, control, and domestication of the Gospel by dominant philosophical, scientific, and hermeneutical principles and as a consequence, challenges the inevitable mastering and deformation of the Gospel (CD IV/3.2: 821). In this regard, Barth’s strategy of interpretation focuses on the living Word of the living Jesus Christ (CD IV/3.2: 821) as the theological subject matter that provides a new insight into the hermeneutics of God’s word-event for Christian mission. In light of the act of divine speech, Barth prevents possible deformation, distortion, and falsification of the Gospel. Barth is suspicious of converting people of other cultures to the Christian church with missional witness or testimony to the reconciling Gospel of Jesus Christ. Conversion belongs to the work of God in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Karl Barth was a keen accuser of the European Christendom, which was in the service of World War I and II. In Barth’s theology there is an emphasis on an organic connection between the Scripture and the Newspaper. His political radicalism is based on his ethical sensibility to the reality of evil; the lordless power (Das Nichtige: nothingness) that makes what is meaningful in human life nihil. The continuing existence of this evil belongs to the “not-yet” dimension of reconciliation.107

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In a discussion of Barth’s theology of missio Dei, unilateral emphasis is cast on the Trinity. However, in light of God’s reconciliation, we further can examine and actualize Barth’s theology of missio Dei in a hermeneutical, diaconal, and prophetic perspective. A Hermeneutical Dimension of Missio Dei When it comes to God’s mission from the standpoint of the Word of God, account must be taken of a hermeneutical horizon of evangelization. For Barth, biblical hermeneutics lies in understanding the Scriptures as a witness of divine revelation. Scripture constituted itself as the Canon, because it imposed itself upon the church as such. The self-imposing of the Scripture was possible in virtue of its content, that is, God’s revelation. God’s action on us becomes an event in human words to the extent that it becomes revelation to us. Scripture is God’s Word in the form of attestation, witnessing to God’s revelation in Jesus Christ (CD I/1: 111). This does not imply a direct identification between revelation and Scripture. This identification as an event takes place only through the Holy Spirit. Barth distinguishes Scripture from revelation in terms of form and content. In Scripture we meet human words written in human speech. Insofar as the Scriptures witness to God’s revelation beyond the written words, historical criticism is accepted on theological grounds (CD I/ 2: 464).108 From this perspective we become aware that Barth’s hermeneutics of the biblical subject matter (or content) does not arise out of a general hermeneutical consideration on human language. Understanding and investigating the human word must be done in light of revelation, while expounding on and clarifying the word is done in relation to revelation. Barth maintains that hermeneutics is valid because Scripture is the witness of revelation. A historical-critical understanding of the Scripture is to be developed in light of the theological subject matter. The Scripture as the witness of divine revelation is a special form of the universally valid hermeneutical principle (CD I/2: 468). Nevertheless, Barthian notion of special biblical hermeneutics does not nullify the validity of the principle of general hermeneutics, rather deepens it in light of theological subject matter of revelation. In view of the subject matter of Scripture there is no confident approach to mastering and subduing it. The subject matter of the biblical word is mystery and freedom; human interpretation of the Word of God takes place in an eschatological openness. God’s revelation makes itself said and heard in the human word of the Scripture (CD I/2: 471). As witnesses, the writers of the Bible speak as we do, as fallible, erring people. We can read and evaluate their words as purely human words; subject to immanent critique, not only with regard to their philosophical, historical, and ethical content, but also their religious and theological content. Establishing lacunae, inconsistencies and overemphasis in the human words in Scripture, we are free to critically distance ourselves

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from a figure like Moses or quarrel with James or with Paul. It is in the act of revelation that the human prophets and apostles became who they are in history. In the world of the Scriptures we recognize the human imperfection in the face of divine perfection, while also affirming divine perfection in spite of human imperfection (CD I/2: 508). All that the writers of the Bible say is set and conditioned historically. There are obvious overlaps and contradictions between Torah and the prophets, between John and the Synoptists, and between the writings of Paul and James’ (CD I/2: 509). Because hermeneutics is prescribed by the subject matter, biblical hermeneutics must be guarded against the totalitarian and universal claim of a general, ontological hermeneutics (CD I/2: 472). It is noteworthy that Barth paves the way of a special hermeneutics as informed and prescribed by, and concerned with the subject matter of the Scripture. Here we see Barth’s choice of verbal inspiration grounded in the internal, living testimony of the Spirit and a free Word of God, as opposed to verbal inspiredness in a mantico-mechanical sense. This is because Barth maintains that verbal inspiration does not mean the infallibility of the biblical words as human words in their linguistic, historical, and theological character (CD I/2: 533).109 Given this fact, it is illuminating to review Luther’s hermeneutical inf luence on Barth’s theology of the Word of God and mission. According to Barth, Luther grounds his biblical hermeneutic in the principle that the whole of Scripture is in regards to Christ. The New Testament should really be only the living Word corporeally, and not the Scripture as the written one (CD I/2:76–77). Luther states that we cannot abstract ourselves from Scripture; rather we are integrated into the new world of the Scriptures. According to Luther, the words “when we first believed” should be related to faith in the promise to Abraham, “in thy name shall all the nations in the earth be blessed” (CD I/2:76). Viewing the New Testament as an opening and revealing of the Old Testament, Luther argues that the books of Moses and the prophets are also Gospel, because they preached and described the same thing about Christ beforehand as the apostles do afterwards. Thus, Gospel should be proclaimed and put in a living voice (viva vox evangelii) that sounds forth and is heard everywhere in the world, rather than written (CD I/1:122– 123). Regarding the unity of the Word of God, Luther maintains that the truth is revealed in three ways: through Scripture by books, word by proclamation, and thought by heart. Barth credits Luther with three forms of the Word of God, which include the eschatological character of the Word of God the Father in se ipso. However, Barth does not understand that the eschatologically characterized third form of God the Father is related to mutual colloquium and consolation of brothers and sisters as a verbum externum in Luther’s theology of word-event (Sprachereignis). For Luther, faith is all the same, so all the fathers of the Old Testament, like Christians, were justified by the Word and faith and also died

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therein. The fathers of the Old Testament entered bliss by the grace of Jesus Christ, whose promise resides in the Old Testament (CD I/2:77–8). There is no word in the New Testament that does not look behind itself into the Old Testament. Luther’s hermeneutic of Christ and Scripture remains normative and foundational for Barth’s theological development as it pertains to Israel and the church, the Word of God and Scripture, and evangelization and mission. Luther’s statement—all scripture has its light from the resurrection—restores the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture as the doctrine of a divine mystery, true and redemptive (Deus incomprehensibilis, CD I/2: 521). God cannot be mastered or conceived; rather God inspires and controls human interpretation of the Word of God. The Bible is the Word of God insofar as it is a witness to God’s revelation. Deepening Luther’s hermeneutics, Barth relates a hermeneutical dimension of evangelization missionally to the work of God in the world. This refers to the freedom of the Word connected with the kingdom of God, which the church serves in witness of the living Jesus Christ, the Lord of the church as well as the Lord of the world (CD I/2: 686). Evangelization and a Political Diakonia In Church Dogmatics, Barth maintains that all exegesis and hermeneutics represent “the life lived at this period, here or there, by the fraction of humanity concerned, and the awareness of life experienced by them.” That is to say “their particular culture, civilization and technics, their historical past and present . . . their national qualities, aspirations and disillusionments, their moral standards and customs, their political order and disorder, their retrogressive or progressive commercial relations and . . . their particular degree of religion or irreligion (CD IV/3.1:821).” These historically conditioned documentations and social connections inf luence and shape the interpretation of Scripture in a decisively political manner. Understanding as a social category is integrated into interpretation in relation to God’s Word. Likewise, the mission of the Word of God is proclaimed as viva vox evangelii in the public sphere. The ministry of viva vox evangelii is to be discharged voce humana in human words, entailing declaration, explanation, and evangelical address to the world. Evangelization serves to awaken the sleeping, lifeless, and dead church that stands in need of renewal (CD IV/3.2: 874). Barth insists that evangelization permeates and sustains all the activity of Christian mission. Here, a hermeneutical dimension of the explanation or explication of the Gospel, which is as the human skill and power given to the church, is explored in light of the living Jesus Christ (IV/3.2: 849). Evangelical address (proclamation and explication in the form of application) stands in so definite a relation to the world that it cannot be achieved in a vacuum (CD IV.3.2: 850).

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The declaration of the Gospel has to be introduced into the sphere of world occurrence. If grace, the covenant, reconciliation, the life of Jesus Christ, and the kingdom of God are not being demonstrated to the world, then the church is not the Christian community (CD IV/3.2: 845). Insofar as the Gospel gives itself to be understood, and wills to be understood—so that human historical fact corresponds to the content of the Word of God—hermeneutical explanation will follow the elucidation of that which issues as the self-declaration of Jesus Christ, which is not to be mastered. Only free promise, in the form of a gift, characterizes the ministry of the church. The Word of God concerning reconciliation, the covenant, the kingdom of God, and the new reality of the world is the promise and assurance given to the church, sustaining its witness to the risen and living Jesus Christ who is the origin, theme, and content of the church’s witness. In the power of the Holy Spirit promise and assurance are given and received (CD IV/3.2: 840). The church lives by the promise of its ministry, fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The cosmic character of the reconciliation that is accomplished in Jesus Christ makes diakonia involving human physical and material existence a sign of the kingdom of God. Diakonia, like other missionary works, is an affair of the church. Engaging in helping the needy in the totality of their human existence, the church should not overlook the needs of individuals grounded in certain disorders of human life in society. Diakonia to the needy does not close its eye to the prevailing social, economic, and political conditions, or evade the church’s partial responsibility for their existence (CD IV/3.2: 892). A Christian mission of diakonia summons the world to ref lect on social injustice and its consequences and to change the conditions and relationships in question, raising social critique that creates a new place for Christian action and gives new meaning to the world. As Barth argues, the Christian church would become a dumb dog and serve the ruling powers, if it is afraid to tackle social evils at their roots (CD IV/3.2: 893). The church without diaconal responsibility would not be the Christian community. Evangelization and a Prophetic Dimension Evangelization occurs in foreign mission, if the only purpose of the mission is to make known the Gospel to foreign peoples. Mission has nothing to do with strengthening confessional positions, extending European or American culture and civilization, or propagating one of the modes of thought and life familiar and dear to the older Christian world. Here Barth contrasts missio Dei with a desire to support colonial or general political interests and aspirations. Mission presupposes the value of the contributions that other religions and cultures make and is performed by allowing each culture to construct the mission in their own way, psychologically, sociologically, aesthetically, and ethically (CD IV/3.2: 875). Cultural

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constructions and contributions must be appreciated and taken seriously, eradicating the crass arrogance of western people, who are opposed to the gospel “in all its radical uniqueness and novelty” (CD IV/3.2: 875). The church’s work of missio Dei takes the form of serving, both in its commencement and continuation, and this has little to do with mastering and ruling a foreign people. Here Barth contends that conversion is the work of God alone; neither at home nor abroad does conversion belong to the work of the Christian community (CD IV/3.2: 876). In the ministry of its witness, the church’s missional action is a prophetic action. Ecclesia semper reformanda (church is in need of continual renewal) is to be understood with its prophetic awareness of the “signs of the times” (CD IV/3.2: 895–896). The church’s missional fellowship and solidarity with the world takes issue with the racial question. Barth maintains that racially different people must be seen and taken seriously in their cultural particularity and orientation. The church’s witness to the mutual fellowship of the people of the world nullifies an attempt at dividing the church into special white, black, or brown congregations (CD IV/ 3. 2: 899). The church does not turn a blind eye to sociological divisions when the prophetic mission is applied to the economic classes with their conf licting interests and ideologies. In no circumstances should the church sanction and absolutize class distinctions. According to Barth, it would be morally questionable and even sick if the church’s mission identified itself with a class, its concerns and its interests; its faith and its ideology; or its ethos with its morality (CD IV/3.2: 900). In the light of the Gospel of the kingdom of God, church mission is concerned with unsolved social problems: to seek a new and third way, transcending capitalist ideas and attitudes as well as the proletariat. In the Christian sacrament of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, church mission is concerned with establishing fellowship, solidarity, and recognition in the world. In the sacramental celebration, the Trinitarian fellowship of missio Dei underscores God’s fellowship with the world created by God and reconciled to God. This is the prototype, the meaning and the power of Christian mission (CD IV/3.2: 901). The Christian community cooperates with God’s work and is pledged and committed to the world. It is ascribed, allotted, and promised the grace of liberation to enable solidarity with the world and responsibility for it. Along with the Lord’s Supper— the community’s participation in Christ’s body and blood—baptism is full of meaning and power, establishing a fellowship in which God’s action is the prototype of the church’s missional action. Appropriating Luther’s idea of God’s reign (in his Large Catechism), Barth appeals to Lutheran sacramental language, “in, with, and under.” In, with, and under God’s coming, God’s kingdom comes in full present reality.110 Hermeneutical Perspective on Israel and the Church Recognizing Luther’s hermeneutical principle of “what urges and promotes Christ,” Barth affirms Luther’s statement that Scripture is the

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garment that Jesus Christ has put on and in which He lets Himself to be seen and found (CD I/2: 478, 484).111 The Christ of the New Testament is the Christ of the Old Testament, the Christ of Israel. Barth’s Reformationoriented hermeneutic of the Word of God—veritas scripturae ipsius—argues that the biblical texts must be investigated for their own sake since the revelation stands and occurs in the Scripture. Nevertheless, the words of Scripture must not take the place of the biblical subject matter—the Word of God (revelation). Barth contends that we cannot eliminate the Old Testament or substitute for it the records of the early religious history of other people. The Hebrew Bible is the witness of recollection alongside the original Canon, which is the witness of expectation. This perspective implies the decisive issue between the church and the synagogue. On the basis of the resurrection of Jesus, Moses and the prophets belong as the prophetic heralds of Jesus Christ together with the Evangelists and apostles (CD I/2: 490, 494). The whole doctrine of the Scriptures circles around the events of recollection and expectation, such that the hermeneutical exposition of recollection and expectation encircles our place and task in face of the present (CD I/2: 503). Scripture, as the witness of God’s revelation, is a product of the Jewish spirit according to its humanity. The whole of the Bible is a Jewish book, not to be understood without taking account of the language, thought, and history of the Jews. The Christian attitude to the Jews is shaped and characterized by the continuing existence of the Jews as the natural proof of God in world history. Christians should be prepared to become Jews with the Jews (CD I/2: 511). The Anti-Semitism in us must be eliminated. In the hermeneutical circle of recollection and expectation we look to the present of God’s wordevent. From the standpoint of inspiration (2 Tim 3; 16, 2 Pet 1: 20f ) Barth maintains that the unity between the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Bible is a free act of the grace of God so that the Bible’s whole content is always a promise (CD I/2: 514). If the church co-operates in the hostility toward the Jewish people, it becomes blind, deaf, and stupid. The Christian must recognize Christ in the Jew. Self-alienation from the existence of the Jew is devilish madness. Rejecting the Jew, we reject God (CD I/2: 511). Later in his doctrine of reconciliation, Barth expresses a similar view by arguing that it is unfortunate to speak of Jewish mission, because “mission is not the witness which it owes to Israel” (CD IV/3.2: 877). The Jews are a living commentary on the Old Testament, the only convincing proof of God outside the Scripture. Christian mission has nothing to do with the strengthening, confirmation, or extension of western or any other culture, civilization, or politics on the Jews. Mission should be carried out with the greatest respect for the value in other religions. Mission involves the whole person and so cares for humans in their totality. Education, healing, help, and the needs of all are rightly associated with mission.

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Barth, based on his exegesis of Rom 9–11, does not believe in the possibility of Christian mission to the Jews. Yet, dialog between Christianity and Judaism is important and necessary. The purpose of dialog is to make the synagogue jealous, encouraging it to be faithful to God’s promise in the Old Testament. Jesus Christ is the Messiah of Israel and the Lord of the church. These two communities stand under the arch of God’s one covenant. In his Ad Limina Apostolorum (1967) Barth engages with the Catholic theology of Vatican II. He is positive about Catholic openness toward world religions. But he asks whether the church could speak of the past and present history of Israel in the same breath as non-Christian religions.112 In Rome in 1966, Barth emphasized anew the importance of the JewishChristian relationship for ecumenical fellowship: “There are today many good relations between the Roman Catholic Church and many Protestant churches . . . But we should not forget that there is finally only one actual great ecumenical question—our relation to Judaism.” 113 Barth’s theology presents within itself a structure of Jewish-Christian renewal and radical openness toward the world. This perspective locates and appreciates Barth as an important contributor to a post–Shoah theology in openness toward the reality of a multireligious world. However, some scholars take issue with Barth’s description of election regarding the relationship between Israel and the church. Our next concern is to review the limitations and contributions of Barth’s theology of Israel while also considering scholars’ critique of Barth in a JewishChristian renewal. Barth’s View of Israel Election in a Post–Shoah Context According to Barth, in choosing Jesus Christ, God destines humans for election, blessing, and life while God elects Jesus Christ for rejection, condemnation, and death. This decision takes place ultimately in Christ’s death on the cross. For this reason, there is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus (CD II/2: 167). The doctrine of election for Barth is “the sum of the Gospel” (CD II/2: 3). Discussing the community of those who are elected in Christ, Barth understands this elected community to be both Israel and the church. Jesus Christ as the Messiah of Israel and the Lord of the church shapes Barth’s grounding principle in his approach the relationship between Israel and the church. Both together in unity stand under the one covenantal grace of God in Christ. What is decisive in Barth’s doctrine of election is to affirm, clarify, and develop “the bow of the one covenant [that] arches over the whole” (CD II/2: 200).114 Despite Barth’s concept of the solidarity of the one covenant between Israel and the church, he, in his typical dialectical fashion, treats Israel as a witness to God’s judgment, while the church witnesses to God’s mercy (CD II/2: 205). This dialectical model has received criticism from the circle of theologians who are committed to Jewish-Christian renewal. For instance, Katherine Sonderegger argues that Barth conceives of Israel

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election only for rejection. She charges Barth with allowing full expression for “a form of dogmatic anti-Judaism.” 115 Counter to this critique, however, Barth states that in the event of Jesus Christ, Israel has already become new by being converted from death to life. Israel’s participation in Jesus Christ—even including unbelieving Jews—does not necessarily mean that Israel is superseded into the ecclesial sphere. Barth perceives that Israel is a witness to the form of humanity which is passing away. Referring to the Jewish cemetery in Prague, Barth states that it contains an objectively true Gospel than all of the unbelieving (and much of the Christian) Goyim wisdom (CD II/2:236). In fact, Barth articulates a christological embracing of disobedient Israel by interpreting it as Christ’s natural environment. Israel is not unilaterally elected only for rejection. As the church lives on in Israel, so Israel lives on in the church in co-existence and pro-existence. In his doctrine of election Barth does not ghettoize theology only to promote for the positivism of revelation. Instead, he embraces the historical implications of Israel for the church. As the New Testament stands in an indissoluble connection to the Hebrew Bible, the church is in indissoluble solidarity with Israel. In fact, the church stands or falls in its fellowship and solidarity with Israel. Accordingly, Christian anti-Judaism is essentially rooted in the doctrine of the replacement of Israel by the church. However, the person who believes in Jesus must accept the Jews as the ancestors and relatives of Jesus. Otherwise, one rejects Jesus himself along with the Jews. Against the main argument of Christian anti-Semitism, Barth warns the church not to say that it was the Jews who crucified Jesus. If the church says this, then in their minds Israel has become a thing of past history and is forsaken by God (CD II/2:290). Against this Christian anti-Semitism, Barth interprets the resurrection of Jesus as nullifying the Jewish disobedience. “The finis arbitrarily written by the unbelieving will of Israel in the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus has been finally cancelled . . . in His resurrection from the dead” (CD II/2:291). Barth’s ref lection of Israel as Christ’s natural environment and of the church as Christ’s historical environment disqualifies Barth’s critics’ argument that Israel is only for rejection and the church is only for election. Rather the arch of God’s eternal will of election dialectically includes Israel and the church together within the environment of Jesus Christ. God’s mercy is the final ground and justification for establishing the relation between Israel and the church. Even in the face of a Christ-rejecting Judaism, God’s mercy remains the first and final word for the election of Israel. Nevertheless, Barth is not capable of integrating Jewish existence in light of a formal Christology as compared to the factual Christology of Christian theology.116 A limitation of Barth’s theology of Israel can be seen in his description of the synagogue (CD II/2: 263). Herein we observe that the idea of the integration (even replacement) of Israel by the church secretly governs Barth’s theology of Israel. Against Barth’s negative description of

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the synagogue, Marquardt asks whether Israel is not, even in its bruised form, already a witness to God’s condescending goodness, or whether Israel as a witness to the death of Jesus Christ is not also a witness to his resurrection.117 On the other hand, Barth looks to the future of Israel—including the present state of unbelieving Jews—and the future of the church, in the perspective of God’s gracious love (CD II/2: 303). What makes Christian anti-Semitism impossible is Israel’s hope, which is really the hope of both Israel and the church. Israel’s future strengthens the church’s responsibility to be a wholly present reality (CD II/2: 305). Insofar as the Jewish people are “the librarians of the church,” confessing Jesus Christ means confessing the fulfillment of God’s promise given first to Israel that is “the substance of all the hope of the fathers,” “of all the exhortations and threats of Moses and the prophets,” “of every letter in the sacred books of Israel” (CD II/2: 204). In this interpretative sense Barth’s idea of the dissolution of Israel and the synagogue into the church does not necessarily mean an ecclesiological replacement of Israel without reservation. God’s Faithfulness to Israel Barth does not fail to stress the inviolability of God’s faithfulness and election in the face of Israel’s resistance. Based on God’s faithfulness, Barth is eager to affirm a blessed and hopeful future for Israel. Regardless of the reality of Israel’s present resistance to the Gospel, the fundamental blessing is confirmed. The final word is one of testimony to the divine “Yes” to Israel (CD II/2: 15). The protological aspect of God’s covenant with Abraham carries the weight of eschatological correspondence. The whole of Israel is not sanctified through the remnant, but the remnant represents the whole. What is represented authentically in the rest is the root that is Jesus Christ, the last born. He is the last number of the remnant and the first-born brother (CD II/2: 300). Subsequently, in his doctrine of providence, Barth begins to speak of a post-biblical, Christ-rejecting Judaism in an affirmative contour, depicting it as the single natural proof of God. The existence of Judaism is the sign of God’s reign and it functions as the natural environment of Jesus Christ. In his approach to the history of the Jews Barth does not take historical relativism, a Jewish self-understanding, a philo-Semitist position, or anti-Semitism as a point of departure. Instead, he adopts the standpoint of God’s faithfulness in Jesus Christ to Israel (CD III/3: 216–217). Thus it is certain that, from Barth’s perspective, the history of the Jews and their covenantal significance is based on God’s faithfulness to them and should also be considered in light of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Word became Jewish flesh (CD IV/1: 171). God became a man of Israel. The I of Jesus comes from Israel. He, according to his Jewish flesh, retains the old Israel in his constitution; that is the natural people of the offspring of Abraham. The covenant of God should be fulfilled, in accordance with God’s

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faithfulness, in the coming of the Son from the tribe of Abraham. Neither the natural and biological dimension of Jewish hope should be twisted in an antiSemitic direction, nor the tribe of Abraham be spiritualized in a Christian way. Those who condemn and persecute the Jews do the same thing to Jesus Christ. Anyone who is a principal enemy of the Jews is a principal enemy of Jesus Christ. Thus, “anti-Semitism is a sin against the Holy Spirit.” 118 Using the image of the “new Golgotha” to speak of God’s presence with God’s suffering servant, Barth reiterates the promise of Jeremiah 31 for the suffering Jews in Germany. The offspring of Israel will never cease to be a nation before God; it was a proof of God that such a nation as Pharaoh’s Egypt with its armies, which murdered Jews, had necessarily met a horrific end.119 At the height of the Holocaust in July of 1944, Barth stated: What kind of picture is it that it is raised to our eyes in the middle of today’s contemporary occurrences just in the groundless and defenseless slaughtering of the Jewish people? Is it not that punished and tormented servant of God for the sake of others from the book of Isaiah? Is it not our crucified Lord Jesus Christ himself who becomes visible in the destiny of those countless Jews who are shot or finally murdered through poison gas? Like God has delivered up God’s Son for us, it is what is once more carried out before us in the destiny of his physical brothers and sisters.120 In retrospect, Rabbi Geis says, “Who, other than Karl Barth, could have demonstrated more clearly the struggle and courageous resistance that develops from grace?” 121 Barth implies that the Jewish existence as the natural environment of Jesus Christ forms and constitutes a formal Christology. Israel stands in accordance with the factual Christology of the Christian church. Therefore, central for Barth’s theology of Israel is not a rejection, an expropriation, and a paganization of Israel, but an appreciation of Israel in terms of the natural environment of Jesus Christ that encompasses a doctrine of justification for the Jewish people. Unlike Luther and Calvin, Barth understands justification of the ungodly theologically and covenantly from the standpoint of God’s faithful election of Israel. Thus the Christian teaching of justification does not mean the end of God’s faithfulness in the election of Israel/Judaism. Rather, a Christian teaching of justification must be seen in light of God’s election of Israel.122 The entire history of Israel reveals itself as God’s gift of covenant and grace. Barth takes into consideration the prophecies from the messianic history of Israel as an adequate prefiguration of the messianic prophecy of Jesus Christ. In and with the prophecy of the history of Israel the prophecy of Jesus Christ is in the form of an exact prefiguration (CD IV/3.1:65). Herein we can discern Barth’s model of correlation between the entire messianic history of Israel and the messianic prophecy of Jesus Christ. Barth presents his unique and remarkable dogmatic systematization of Israel’s relevance to his Christology by comparing Jesus with the entire history of Israel without reservation.

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God’s faithfulness in Jesus Christ to God’s people—whether they are faithful or unfaithful—becomes the hermeneutical principle in Barth’s approach to the Jewish people. Barth subsequently calls for the abandonment of a Christian mission to Jews. The concept of a Christian mission to the Jews is theologically impossible. “In relation to the Synagogue, there can be no real question of ‘mission’. . . Mission is not the witness which it owes to Israel” (CD IV/3. 2: 877). Barth states that “the Jew, even the unbelieving Jew, so miraculously preserved, . . . through the many calamities of his history, . . . is the natural historical monument of the love and faithfulness of God, who in concrete form is the epitome of the man freely chosen and blessed by God, who as a living commentary on the Old Testament is the only convincing proof of God outside the Bible” (CD IV/3. 2: 877). A conversation for the purpose of converting the Jews to Christianity is meaningless. The church must live together with the synagogue, not as a separate religion or confession, but as the root from which the church has emerged. If the Hebrew Bible is the root of Christian church, should not Jewish self-understanding of the Hebrew Bible through the Talmud be appreciated as the configuration of God’s Word in relation to the Christian church? However, Barth remains limited in this respect. In Barth’s Ad Limina Apostolorum (1967) he devotes himself to a serious study of the sixteen Latin texts in Vatican II, paying special attention to matters of Israel and non-Christian religions. Recognizing that the Hebrew Bible presents “the original form of the one revelation of God,” Barth wonders if we should not make a formal confession of guilt in view of the anti-Semitism in the ancient, the medieval, and the modern church.123 The ecumenical movement today suffers much more from the absence of Israel than from the absence of Rome and Moscow (CD IV/3.2: 878). God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ is the confirmation and fulfillment of Israel’s election and covenant. The temporary pruning of its natural branches and the grafting of wild shoots onto it in the parable of the olive tree does not say that the church supplants Israel. Instead, the originally nonelected Gentiles come into the place of Israel through God’s mercy. The church must stand in alliance with Israel and witness to the Gospel among the pagans rather than pursuing missions to the unbelieving Jews. In particular, Barth perceives that Israel is witness to humanity as passing away. Israel remains elect, offering the testimony of an innocent victim to a humanity that is perishing and passing away in the midst of a Gentile world that pushes Israel out of the way. A Gentile Christian falls into sheer paganism or anti-Semitism when he or she does not hear Israel’s witness. Israel as the people of the risen Christ has a hopeful, new, and gracious beginning that dawns in the resurrection of Christ. It is appropriate to relate the passing away of Israel to the suffering of Israel, which represents suffering humanity in the world of a Gentile Christianity, even in conf lict with that Christianity. The Jews constitute the universal horizon for the

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goyim as well as a tangible reality of the innocent victim. Jesus Christ who comes in Jewish f lesh announces God as “the One whose will is that [God’s people] should be totally changed and renewed” (CD IV/2: 180). As a revolutionary and also the partisan of the poor, Jesus Christ stands in God’s “corresponding partisanship of those who are lowly in this world” (CD IV/2: 248–9). Given this political ethics, it is certain that Barth was not blind to the political reality in the Palestine of his day. We notice Barth’s concern about Islam in his dialog with J. Bouman from Lebanon. In his letter to H. Berkhof in Leiden (1968), Barth reported on his conversation with J. Bouman: “In theological appreciation of the situation there [in Lebanon] . . . we were but completely in agreement” that “a new communication about the relation between Bible and Koran is an urgent task for us.” 124 This statement refers to Barth’s argument for a confession of guilt regarding “the deplorable role of the Church in the so-called crusades.” 125 In the context of the ministry of church, Barth views Islam’s achievements positively, both in their primitive forms and in higher forms. Islam’s constructs are both interesting and imposing in their own way— psychological, sociological, aesthetical, and ethical—as well as from the general human standpoint. From a missional perspective Barth maintains that they should be valued and taken seriously without the crass arrogance of western Christian people (CD IV 3/2: 875). This perspective provides an access point for a dialog between Christianity and Islam. God’s existence is “the fact that not only sheds new light on, but materially changes, all things and everything in all things” (CD II/1: 258). God who loves in freedom is the one who transforms all violence and injustice in the public sphere, fighting against the reality of lordless powers.126 Lordless power as the penultimate enemy must be taken seriously in our political, economic, cultural, and interreligious context. As Barth argues, “the demonism of politics consists in the idea of ‘empire’, which is always inhuman as such. This can be a monarchical, aristocratic, democratic, nationalistic, or socialistic idea.” 127 Barth in his doctrine of lights and words (CD IV/3.1 § 69) argues that Jesus Christ; as a Jewish representative of God’s covenant with Israel—“a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:32)—is connected with Jesus as a partisan for the innocent victim of massa perditionis. This perspective encourages the Christian church, in the spirit of spiritual humility and radical openness, to engage in listening to the alien and irregular voice of God coming out of world religions. A Christian fraternal relationship with Israel and also Islam must be developed in the direction of upholding transformative recognition of religious outsiders through whom God may speak for the sake of peace, justice, and respect within or between multireligious communities. Religious outsiders and secular humanists, as seen in light of Torah for the Gentiles in the Nohide covenant, may find their place in Jewish faithfulness to the Torah, which is also valued in Jesus’ faithful obedience to the God of Israel.

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As Barth further states in The Hope of Israel, “We have to say first of the people which bases its hope on the same object, which is also the ground of our hope, namely in the coming Messiah . . . it [this hope] is based namely in the promises of God, which he has given his chosen people. If it can be claimed by a community at all that it lives by hope, then this is to be said precisely and first of Judaism. Israel is the people of hope.” 128 Barth affirms the Jewish people and their religion as the community of hope based on God’s promise. Be that as it may, Barth is not prepared to affirm the Jewish “No” to the Christian church as “an act of Israel’s faithfulness to the Torah.” 129 Critically distancing ourselves from Barth’s limitation (the so-called face looking backwards), we need to integrate and deepen Jewish self-understanding as an important categorical dimension in the theological discussion with Israel. If God has not thrown away God’s people, Israel’s self-consciousness and existence should not remain a quantité négligeable.130 Missio Dei in Public Sphere: Jesus Christ and Religious Pluralism In the North American context, Karl Barth is explored as part of the task of constructing a public theology. Here, a public theology evaluates the church in a pluralistic culture, seeking to describe Christian thought and practice with attention to the broader social and cultural realms within which Christians seek to live in accordance with the narrative of Christian Gospel.131 In the search for an authentic public voice, Thiemann proposes an interpretative strategy of thick description in order to understand the relation between Christian convictions and the broader social and cultural context. In short, public theology is faith seeking to understand the public relevance of Christian theology in a social cultural location.132 That being the case, a thick description must be undertaken of Barth’s theology of mission, Jewish-Christian relation, and the reality of pluralistic culture to establish its public relevance. It is essential to appreciate and carefully describe the public relevance of Barth’s Christology with regards to the church’s openness toward the world of religious pluralism. In his deliberation on the Word of God, Barth gives priority to the revealed Word. Barth’s ref lections on revelation cannot be adequately understood apart from his ref lections on God’s alien voice. According to Barth, God can speak to us through a pagan or an atheist. When God speaks in actuality we must listen attentively to God (CD I/1: 55–60). Since God can speak to us in strange and profane forms, we are called to assume a humble attitude and openness. As Barth argues, “God may speak to us through Russian Communism, a f lute concerto, a blossoming shrub, or a dead dog . . . God may speak to us through a pagan or an atheist, and thus give us to understand that the boundary between the Church and the secular world can still take at any time a different course from that which

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we think we discern” (CD I/1:55). Barth continues his insight on God’s strange voice in his later doctrine of lights within reconciliation, namely true words extra muros ecclesiae (outside of walls of Christian church). In his inquiry concerning secular parables of God’s kingdom, Barth dialectically combines the Word of Jesus Christ with various truth claims in a pluralistic context. God cannot abandon any secular sphere in the world reconciled with God in Jesus Christ. Even from the mouth of Balaam we recognize the well-known voice of the Good Shepherd that should not be ignored despite its sinister origin (CD IV/3.1:119). However, Barth is hesitant to canonize or give a dogmatic status to such extraordinary ways and free communications of Jesus Christ (CD IV/3.1:133f ). If Barth were to canonize or give dogmatic examples of secular parables, he would inevitably run into a relativistic-metaphysical position, which would result in an expatriation of God’s covenant with Israel in concrete, historical reality. However, without leaving the sure ground of Christology, Barth maintains that the church has the task of examining closely whether these profane words and lights are in agreement with scripture, church tradition, or dogma and whether the fruits of these words outside Christianity are good and whether their effect in the community is positive. This is what Barth calls a supplementary and auxiliary criterion, namely “the fruits which such true words . . . seem to bear in the outside world” (CD IV/3.1:127). Barth and Pure Land Buddhism Barth’s reading of Buddhism by way of a sign (of God’s universal grace)seeking hermeneutics needs to be discussed and developed in his examination of the profane words and lights in terms of Scripture, church tradition, or dogma. Already in his theology of religions (in CD I/2 § 17), Barth articulates the significance of the name of Jesus Christ in an interreligious context. Barth scrutinizes Pure Land Buddhism that stands closer to the grace religion of the Reformation than other religions. In his reading of this Buddhism, Barth notices in the faith of Amida Buddha that there is ‘a wholly providential disposition’ (CD 1/2: 340). Still, he does not discern the name of Jesus Christ in this Buddhism. If the name of Jesus Christ does not contradict God’s universal activity in the world of religions, should not Barth appreciate this Buddhism more positively as a parable of God’s kingdom? It is certain that Barth does not give a clear account of this hermeneutical principle of interreligious encounter. However, we observe later his positive evaluation of religions in his doctrine of lights as sake of secular parables of God’s kingdom: “We may think of the radicalness of the need of redemption or the fullness of what is meant by redemption if it is to meet this need” (CD IV/3.1: 125). When we discern a radical human desire for redemption in other religions, when we meet a desire for grace

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or completeness of redemption in other religions, we hear the true words of Jesus Christ. Revelation as Aufhebung (sublation) of another religion (CD I/2 § 17) gives a messianic parabolic character and dynamism to belief and practice in light of the messianic, universal prophecy of Jesus Christ. In the positive sense of Aufhebung, religions are kept and reserved and transformed in light of God’s kingdom, rather than totally denied, superseded, and destroyed. Barth’s use of Aufhebung in a dialectical sense demonstrates his evaluation of religion in both a negative and a positive sense. The abolishing of religion by revelation does not simply mean its negation. Rather, “religion can just as well be exalted in revelation” (CD I/2:326). As a matter of fact, Barth’s critique of religion is primarily directed to Christianity as a religion, rather than against the non-Christian religions. Barth’s theological approach to religion and religions appeals to a tolerance that is informed by the forbearance of Christ deriving from the grace of God’s reconciliation (CD I/2:299). Therefore, Barth’s intent is to affirm the priority of revelation over religions, without exhausting, ecclesiasticizing, and Christianizing them because in light of revelation, religions will be given a parabolic character: pointing and witnessing to God’s kingdom. Barth’s affirmation of the Christian religion as the locus of true religion does not mean that it fulfills all human religions or is superior to non-Christian religions (CD I/2: 298).133 Christianity stands in co-existence with many various religions. In God’s revelation, God is present in the world of human religion (CD I/2: 297). We discern God’s work in human realities and possibilities so that God’s own reality and possibility are encompassed by a sea of more or less adequate parallels and analogies (CD I/2: 282). Christians should not become iconoclasts regarding human greatness as it meets them so strikingly in the sphere of religion (CD I/2: 300). A Christian attitude toward non-Christian religions is characterized by self-criticism, spiritual poverty, and openness. As Barth provocatively argues, “The Veda to the Indians, the Avesta to the Persians, the Tripitaka to the Buddhists, the Koran to its believers: are they not all ‘bibles’ in exactly the same way as the Old and New Testaments?” (CD I/2:282). As we already mentioned above, a Barthian reading of Buddhism continues to be deepened and reactualized in the framework of extra muros ecclesiae (CD IV/3.1). In the encounter with other religions Barth, in later stages, asks whether the radicalness of the human need for redemption (grace) in other religions or the fullness of what is meant by redemption might not correspond to the true words of the prophecy of Jesus Christ. When we discern a radical human desire for redemption in other religions, when we meet a desire for grace or completeness of redemption in them, we can hear true words of Jesus Christ from them that may function as the free communication of God. Honen’s statement in the Pure Land Buddhism is that “even sinners will enter into life; how much more the righteous.” But this statement was

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significantly reversed by his pupil Shinran: “If the righteous enter into life, how much more in the case of sinners” (CD I/2: 341). Barth prefers to quote Shinran, acknowledging the radicalness of justification by the other power of Amida in Shinran’s Buddhism in his comparison with the Reformation theology of grace and justification. According to Barth, we should be grateful for the lesson and teaching that this Buddhism provides (CD I/2: 342). Reconciliation and Prophetic Dialog In light of Christ’s reconciliation, Barth proposes a prophetic dialog with non-Christian religions. He argues that while we may deny God, according to the Word of reconciliation, God does not deny us. No Prometheanism can be effectively maintained against Jesus Christ. Neither the militant godlessness of the outer periphery of the community, nor the intricate heathenism of the inner is an insurmountable barrier to God. All human words can be genuine witnesses and attestations of the one true Word and real parables of the kingdom of Heaven (CD IV.3.1: 119–121). In comparison to Barth, Tillich’s approach to a dialog between Christianity and Buddhism is based on his method of correlation: Tillich thinks all religions find a sacramental basis for themselves. If this basis is properly balanced and united with mystical and prophetic elements, the religion of the concrete Spirit comes to birth and theonomy appears with an eschatological reservation. This theonomous element is part of the structure of the religion of the concrete Spirit. At its foundation, Tillich’s method implies a hermeneutical relevance that was embodied in view of religious pluralism. Buddhism appears for Tillich more and more as a living religion in polar tension to Christianity. Furthermore, George Hunsinger explains Barth’s position with Tillich’s categories of autonomy, heteronomy, and theonomy. Other lights are neither self-contained nor self-sufficient nor simply autonomous in relation to the one great light. Other lights are not conceived to be outside the one great light as external, alien, or heteronymous. True human words or secular parables are conceived as coexistent with Jesus Christ as the one Word of God that may be regarded as the theonomous principle. As Hunsinger argues, “In a theonomous situation, the periphery is fully determined and governed by the truth of the center, but not violated or overwhelmed by it.” 134 Because of the mystery of creation, the periphery which is not subsumed into the center holds “its own real freedom (relative autonomy) and real existence (relative heteronomy)” in light of the truth of the center. However, Barth’s theology of God’s speech event assumes more post– ecclesial, irregular, and provocative character than the center-periphery relationship. Secular parables are supposed to be accepted as “free communications of the will of [their] Lord” (CD IV/3.1: 130). In light of God’s reconciliation, Barth boldly affirms “dangerous modern expressions like the revelation of creation or primal revelations”

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(CD IV/3.1: 140).135 Barth assumes that the divine work of reconciliation does not negate the divine work of creation, nor does it deprive creation of its meaning. There is no point of tearing asunder “the original connection between creaturely esse and creaturely nosse” (CD IV/3.1: 139). Secular parables are supposed to be accepted as free communications of God’s will (CD IV/3.1: 130) that becomes a central motif in Barth’s theology of true words extra muros ecclesiae. It is promised and given for secular realms to be parables of the kingdom of heaven (CD IV/3.1: 114). If there are such words and lights, namely parables of the kingdom at a very different level in the secular world, the Christian community should be grateful to receive them also from without, in very different human words, in a secular parable (CD IV/3.1: 115). Barth does not want to talk about words in the world by recourse to the hypothesis of natural theology, but rather by recourse to the universal dimension of Christology associated with the mysterious speech event of God. In light of God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ, no secular sphere is abandoned by God “even where it seems to approximate most dangerously to the pure and absolute form of utter godlessness.” Furthermore, in light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have to be prepared for true words “even from what seems to be the darkest places” (CD IV/3.1: 119). After all, non-Christians’ refusal will not be strong enough to resist the fulfillment of the promise of the Spirit, or to ignore Christ (CD IV/3.1: 355). In relativizing, integrating, and transforming “natural theology” socially, materially, and culturally by means of Christ’ reconciliation,136 Barth gives some indication that true words may be heard even from an “openly pagan” worldliness: “We may think of the mystery of God, which we Christians so easily talk away in a proper concern for God’s own cause . . . We may think of the lack of fear in the face of death which Christians to their shame often display far less readily than non-Christians far and near . . .” (CD IV/3.1: 125). In commenting on this statement Marquardt argues that we see in this passage Judaism, socialism, and practical forms of humanness without faith and world religions next to the great light of Jesus Christ.137 Marquardt’s comment is validated by Barth’s rejection of a Christian mission to the Jews and his commitment to more social justice and democracy. As mentioned above, the concept of a Christian mission to the Jews is theologically impossible. Barth states that the unbelieving Jew is miraculously preserved through the many calamities of his history. This is the natural historical monument of the love and faithfulness of God. The Jews are a living commentary on the Old Testament which is the only convincing proof of God outside the Bible (CD IV/3.2: 877). Later in explication of his so-called doctrine of lights, Barth affirmed that there are co-brothers and sisters in socialist atheism who stand in the inheritance of the promise and hope of the kingdom of God.138 Accordingly, in the secular world there is the express and unequivocal secularism of militant godlessness. But there is also a closer periphery, that

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is, the mixed and relative secularism of the Biblical-ecclesial sphere (CD IV/3.1: 118). Barth’s preference for a secularism of militant godlessness over mixed and relative secularism is obvious. The mixed and relative secularism might be characterized by an even greater resistance to the Gospel. It makes certain concessions and accommodations, parading in large measure as a world of Christian culture (CD IV/3.1: 120). Barth’s particular commitment to Jesus Christ as a Jew does not block his prophetic openness to the ways of religious others in light of God’s reconciliation. Secular truth claims can be revealed to have their origin and meaning in the awakening power of Jesus Christ (CD IV/3.1: 128–9). Along this line, it is essential to deal with Barth’s Christological universalism in reference to theologia naturalis. According to Barth, “natural theology (theologia naturalis) is included and brought into clear light within the theology of revelation (theologia revelata), for in the reality of divine grace there is included the truth of the divine creation.” In this sense, “grace does not destroy but completes it.” 139 Barth’s renewal of extra Calvinistcum140 provides a universal-inclusive basis for his Christology of anhypostasis and enhypostasis. This doctrine becomes for Barth not only an indication of the remaining majesty of the divine Word, even in the state of incarnation, but also—in Barth’s typical supplementary way—a witness for the divine actuality as well as for the divine universality of the Word.141 Thus Barth affirms Tertullian’s concept of anima humana naturaliter Christiana in light of Jesus Christ as the light of life (CD IV/3.2: 491). In this light, Marquardt assumes that Barth might revoke his previous radical rejection of theologia naturalis through his 1959 published article of “light of life” (CD IV/3.1). As evidence for this, Marquardt introduces Barth’s own testimony in his interview with Brüdergemeine in 1961: “Later I retrieved the theologia naturalis via Christology again. Today my critique would be: One must say theologia naturalis only differently, that is, just christologically.” 142 Barth’s provocative sentence reads: “In his being humanity as human God has implicitly assumed the humanity of all men . . . With humanity is the church, which exists anhypostatically and enhypostatically in Jesus Christ. At the end of time Jesus Christ will be the totus Christus.” 143 The enhypostasis of the humanitas of the collective human species exists in the incarnated Word. Therefore, in Jesus Christ is posited not merely one human, but the humanity of all humans so that all humanity is exalted as such to unity with God. That being the case, the christological establishment of natural theology is identified with Barth’s transformation of its structure in the inherited form.144 Christ’s divinity is to a theology of revelation what his humanity is to the content of theologia naturalis because in Jesus Christ the humanum of all humans is posited and exalted as such to unity with God (CD IV/2: 49). In explicating the comprehensive character of the humanity of Jesus Christ as the totus Christus, Barth again affirms that human nature is elected by

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God and assumed into unity with God’s existence implicitly including all people. In Jesus Christ, God has implicitly assumed the human being of all people. In Christ not only all of us as homines, but also our humanitas as such exists in and with God (CD IV/2: 59). There is no natural realm existing independent of Christological effectiveness. In the typology of Adam and Christ in Romans Chapter 5 Barth emphatically says, “Jesus Christ is the secret and the truth of sinful and mortal humankind and also the secret and the truth of human nature as such.” 145 Therefore, the doctrine of “the recapitulation of all things” becomes open for Barth: “It is God’s will to save all men, as 1 Timothy 2:4 and other scriptural passages clearly point out . . . The open number of the elect should not be made a closed number . . .” (CD II/2: 466). In connection with his doctrine of election, we again read in Barth’s statement: “The Church will then not preach an apokatastasis, nor will it preach a powerless grace of Jesus Christ or a human wickedness which is too powerful for it (CD II/2: 477).” Karl Barth and the Incomplete Legacy for Religious Pluralism Barth’s prophetic-dialogical model with Judaism and other religions does not fit into the theological circle of relativistic-metaphysical pluralism (at the cost of the particularity of Jesus Christ) nor the theological circle of the superiority or absoluteness of Christianity (for the sake of ecclesiological triumphalism). The messianic prophecy of Jesus Christ correlates with the entire messianic history of Israel in which Barth rejects a Christian mission to the Jews as theologically impossible. This perspective may become a point of departure for developing a theology after the Shoah. In his doctrine of true words and lights in world history and creation, Barth is not convinced of the appropriateness of exalting the absoluteness of Christianity over other religions. Rather, Barth leads the Christian church to a humble attitude with self-criticism and openness toward religious others as God’s free communication. Barth is skeptical of any attempt at evangelizing ideologies, cultures, and other religions in the name of Christianity because in Jesus Christ God is reconciled with the ungodly world. Barth’s deliberation of true lights and words as free communications of God does not necessarily contradict the hermeneutical project of the fusion of horizons between Christianity and other religions. Nevertheless, Barth’s political theology becomes a corrective to ontological hermeneutic. The historical-ontological grounding of interpretation (H.-G. Gadamer) in the midst of interfaith dialog is vulnerable to the reality of those who are marginalized in the religious history, which is in the service of the powerful. This philosophical hermeneutic no longer poses a question of what social and cultural factors have shaped and characterized the ideological-linguistic structure correlated with the history of effect. Language is not only a house of being (Heidegger), but it is also an instrument for distorted communication. The indispensable moment in

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a hermeneutical project of suspicion, audacity, and resistance should be the analysis of false consciousness rooted in human interpretation and ontological consciousness. However, Barth did not manage to develop this perspective. This critical hermeneutical approach belongs to a new chapter in interreligious exchange for mutual respect and transformation. At the 1992 Leuenberg conference Bertold Klappert presented Markus Barth’s report on his father, Karl Barth. This report outlines Karl Barth’s intention, if allowed, to preoccupy himself with the history of religion. Considering Barth’s plan for a history of world religions, Klappert introduces an outline of Barth’s research in the following way: 1. A relation between Christianity and Judaism; 2. A relation between Judaism and Islam; 3. A relation between Buddhism and Hinduism. In an examination of Markus Barth’s authorized text on Barth’s plan for the history of world religions, Eberhard Busch, an important biographer of Karl Barth, wrote to Klappert (on December 12, 1992) noting that Markus’ text reveals Barth’s impression of the Second Vatican council’s treatment of non-Christian religions. Rather than Markus Barth’s proposed title, “The General History of Religion,” Busch is convinced that the title “The ecumenical theology of the Holy Spirit” is more consistent with Barth’s own plan.146 In view of Barth’s plan, Klappert speaks of a dialog model of neighboring relations with the religions in the framework of the ecumenical theology of the Holy Spirit, which is based on the axiomatic correlation between the messianic prophecy of Jesus Christ and the entire messianic Israel history. Barth’s ecumenical, global theology of the Holy Spirit, which is embedded in God’s reconciliation, demonstrates the universal work of the Holy Spirit (CD IV/3.1:478). The messianic prophecy of Jesus Christ has already been fulfilled upon all f lesh: the spirit is promised. Barth distinguishes the resurrection, the outpouring of the Spirit, and the final return of Jesus Christ (CD IV/3.1:294). In his response to an interviewer’s question concerning the hidden Christ in the Indian context, he said, “The wind blows where it wills ( Jn. 3:8). Break-through (revelation) of the hidden Christ is always and everywhere possible. Inside and outside the church: even in the life and work and message of strangers (Melchizedek! [Gen 14:18f, Heb 7:1–4]), heathens, atheists!” 147 During the years of 1967 and 1968 Barth pushed beyond the church’s confession of guilt to Israel in the Vatican document to non-Christian religions. Barth questioned whether or not such a guilt confession should be extended to Muslims concerning the church’s fatal role in the so-called crusades.148As we have already mentioned, Barth maintained a conversation with Islamic scholar J. Bouman regarding the political situation in Lebanon. Here Barth mentions the urgent contemporary task of establishing new communication between the Bible and the Qur’an. For this urgent task of understanding the relation between the Bible and the Qur’an, Barth is concerned with developing a world-open theology of the Holy Spirit in an ecumenical and global horizon, though the project’s was left unfinished.

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In deliberation of an irregular theology, Barth articulates unmethodical, chaotic, and provocative dimensions within his theology of the Word of God. As in guerilla warfare, this irregular dogmatics runs counter to the danger inherent in the regular scholastic practice of stubborn dogmatizing and ossifying.149 In the irregular approach, a more productive result is gained than would be possible with regular and systematic methodology. This irregular and post–ecclesial theology is no less scientific than the regular systematic theology. However, Barth’s sense of irregular theology remains assertive rather than hermeneutically involved in the life world of religious outsiders. In reference to God’s universal reign, according to Barth, there is a fundamental lack of principle in the dogmatic method. This is because it does not proceed from the center but from the periphery of the circle. Metaphorically speaking, it comes from the self-positing and self-authenticating Word of God (CD I/2: 869). As the event of God’s work and activity, the Word of God actually speaks in all directions like the circumference speaking towards the center or the center simultaneously speaking to the whole circumference. In his presentation of the speech of God as the mystery of God (CD I/1: 162), Barth relates this aspect of mystery to “a penultimate ‘de-assuring’ of theology” (CD I/1: 164–5). In light of God’s speech act, Barth stresses the significance of culture for Christian theology, because the dogmatician must think and speak in a particular age. Dogmatic theology is a specific activity of humanity in a particular culture. The problem of theology and dogmatics can also be completely set within the framework of the cultural problem (CD I/1: 283–4). This aspect articulates Barth’s commitment to contemporary issues because the fact that God’s Word is God’s act means first its contingent contemporaneity (CD I/1:145). Barth’s provocative thesis deserves attention: “The fact that not only sheds new light on, but materially changes, all things and everything in all things–the fact that God is” (CD II/1:258). This thesis is especially significant for the Christian church’s openness to the world of non-Christian religions, being faithful to God’s transforming act on the sides of massa perditionis (the lost public mass CD IV/3.2:587: minjung in Korean) in an interreligious context. Christian mission or witness should have no aim to strengthen confessional positions or to extend European or American culture and civilization. Furthermore, Christian mission should be void of the desire to support colonial or general political interests and aspirations (CD IV/3.2: 875). In light of God’s universal reconciliation with the world, Barth rejects the conversion of people of other cultures to the Christian religion. Conversion is not the work of the Christian church at home or abroad. The issue of conversion is the Work of God alone (CD IV/3. 2: 876). As for the importance of World Christianity, Barth expresses an expectation of the discovery of true Christianity in a lecture which was held for 300 students who stayed as guests of the Mustermesse in Basle (most of

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whom were from developing countries): “There may be a religious West, but there is not a Christian West”. . . “It could well be that one day true Christianity will be understood and lived better in Asia and in Africa than in our aged Europe.” 150 East Asian Perspectives on Karl Barth Takizawa (1909–1984) was a follower of Kitaro Nishida (1870–1945), a Japanese Buddhist philosopher. Through Nishida’s recommendation, Takizawa became the first Japanese student of Karl Barth in 1933 at Bonn University. From 1947 to 1971 he taught philosophical theology at Kyushyu University. Takizawa takes issue with the notion of the Godhuman relation in Barth’s thought from a Buddhist perspective. Barth was impressed by his Japanese student who wrote a challenging article against Bultmann, but did not want to be baptized into the theology of Barth.151 As Eberhard Busch reports, Takizawa preoccupied himself with the name Jesus Christ in Barth’s theology: “Since my [Takizawa’s] fortunate encounter with Karl Barth in Bonn, the name of Jesus Christ has in a miraculous way become something from which I can no longer . . . detach myself.” 152 Takizawa found in Barth’s thought some important elements of affinity with Zen Buddhism and the school of Amida Buddhism. According to Takizawa, Barth’s Christology, in keeping with the Urfaktum of human beings and of creation, corresponds to the universal Sunyata of Zen Buddhism. This Urfaktum means the true I-self of Zen Buddhism that already existed from the foundation of the world. According to Takizawa, God’s primary contact with creation existed even before the appearance of the historical Jesus. Therefore, the event of Jesus alone should not be regarded as the exclusive ground for the salvific relationship between God and human beings. For Takizawa, accepting Jesus Christ as the Son of God thus has relevance for Christians alone. If Christian theology restricts “God with us” merely to the historical Jesus, it remains arbitrary, especially to religious outsiders.153 From this perspective, Takizawa is interested in developing a Buddhist Christology beyond the classic dogmatic pattern of Christology in the western church. His concern is given to the Greater One to whom the whole person of Jesus bears witness. Takizawa portrays the Greater One—to whom Jesus bears witness all his life—as the Urfaktum Immanuel. Urfaktum Immanuel means God with us in a crucial relation which never existed before the historical Jesus came. The God who was in Christ (2 Cor 5: 19) was beforehand and eternally, is present today, and will remain the eternal God with us all.154 In altering Barth’s theology to the point of relativizing the historical Jesus, Takizawa is in favor of the divine immediate original relation to human beings. In Takizawa’s reading of Karl Barth, it is possible to discern a retrieval of a theologia naturalis from the perspective of Urfaktum Immanuel. Takizawa takes Barth’s inner Trinitarian formulation “God

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is beforehand in God’s self ” as transcending the historical name of Jesus Christ. Takizawa’s universalistic reading of Karl Barth may be compared to the Buddhist principle of dharmakaya, the Essence Body. Zen Buddhism teaches that the fundamental situation of human beings is that they do not exist apart from Buddha, regardless of whether they know it or not. This is the so-called Buddhist idea of nonduality, namely the principle of radical relationality and complementarity. Barth’s “Theoanthropolgy,” meaning that God does not deny human beings, no matter how hostile or alien they are, even while they may deny God, corresponds with Takizawa’s Buddhist reading of Urfaktum Immanuel. Takizawa’s contribution radicalizes the significance of Jesus Christ up to the point where the fundamental experience of every human being, even in other religions, becomes meaningful in the second Immanuel, as found in Pure Land Buddhism. With a Barthian orientation in mind he paves the way for a christological basis for the study of religious pluralism in light of a Buddhist concept of Urfaktum Immanuel, namely dharmakaya. In a letter sent to Takizawa on August 4, 1958 Karl Barth sent his first printed copy (including pages 115–153) of Church Dogmatics IV/3. Part 1. Barth is aware of Christian Europe’s increasing “direct contact with the far more numerous non-Christian multitudes of the far West and East.” Barth notes that Christian faith has co-existed with many alien religions in Europe since the 16th century (CD IV/3.1: 19). In this context Barth is suspicious of theological attempts to justify and verify the absoluteness of Christianity in terms of a universal prolepsis or ecclesial-historical manner. In light of reconciliation in God’s Word, Christianity stands on the same plain as other religions. God escapes every conceivable synthesis. Capricious conjunction of Jesus Christ with something else is the work of religious arrogance. This applies to such syntheses as Mary, the church, individual history, and a presupposed human self-understanding. However, unlike Takizawa, Urfaktum Immanuel in a Barthian sense is not separated from the historical Immanuel in Jesus Christ who is connected to the messianic history of Israel. Seen in terms of God’s reconciliation with the world, the true words and lights in creation constitute and underscore Barth’s openness to the world religions. Barth’s reciprocal relation between the messianic history of Israel and the prophetic history of Christ does not give full credit to Takizawa’s consequence of universalizing the Urfaktum Immanuel symbolically in relation to the Buddhist idea of Sunyata as Dharmakaya. However, Barth did embrace Takizawa’s interreligious interest. In the Chinese context Barth is appreciated as a theologian who encourages Asian theologians to make use of the resources of Asian culture. The process of indigenization may be done for the glory of God. In other words, indigenization can be seen as doing something courageous for God’s sake. In contemporary Chinese society, a Christian contribution can be seen in the emphasis on morality and ethics. The Reformation

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teaching of justification should not be misinterpreted as a disregard of the importance of morality. Barth’s emphasis on spiritual poverty and the power of revelation in a Christian attitude toward religious outsiders can be appreciated as a way of overcoming syncretism. Barth’s theology can be understood as a theology of dialog with the contemporary world. Barth’s theology, as seen in light of Tillich’s apologetic theology, is taken as a vital signpost encouraging Asian Christians to keep aloof from the idolatrous tendency in religions, quasi-religions, or secular ideologies.155 However, a Chinese reading of Barth does not adequately appreciate the radical side of Barth’s theology of God’s word in action. In Barth’s view, a transformative recognition of religious outsiders does not come from a Christian-religious standpoint, but from the mystery and freedom of God who made a covenant with Israel, is revealed in Jesus Christ, and is reconciled with the world for all of us. In this light, God is free to speak in a completely different manner that comes from the world of religious pluralism. This perspective has little to do with Tillich’s apologetic theology. Barth’s contribution to the pluralistic context lies not merely in his theology of interreligious dialog, but also in his strong awareness of Jesus Christ as the source of solidarity with the poor and a natural environment for an embrace of Israel. Barth needs to be accepted as a theologian of resistance against hegemony, privilege, and domination in the East Asian cultural religious context.156 An Irregular-minjung Perspective on Karl Barth For Barth, Jesus Christ is the “partisan of the poor” and the “revolutionary” (CD IV/2: 180). The people of God’s grace are the ones who are “swimming against the stream, constantly provoking irritation and hostility (CD IV/3.2: 581). Jesus Christ was in solidarity with massa perditionis (the lost pubic mass: minjung, the Korean term) who belonged to the party of the godless assailed by the Pharisees (CD IV/3.2: 587). Jesus’ table fellowship with publicans and sinners constitutes Barth’s theology of grace in a political contour of swimming against the stream (CD IV/3.2: 586), which argues for the good news of God’s saving coup d’état (CD IV/3. 2: 620). Pharisee’s “No” to those around Jesus is not prepared to accept any responsibility for the life of am ha’aretz and participate in the hope that Jesus brings for this people of profanum vulgus (CD IV/3.2: 774). The church existing for the world is the community in solidarity with this people. Here, we discern a parallel between Barth’s theology and Asian irregular minjung theology. Barth’s ref lection of Jesus as the partisan of massa perditionis and God’s words and lights in the reconciled world constitutes an inspiration for the Asian irregular minjung theology that assumes an Israelite prophetic-multicultural configuration in light of God’s act of speech through Torah, Jesus Christ, and face of religious outsiders.157 The

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goal of this Asian irregular theology is to actualize and renew Barth’s theology of massa perditionis and the dynamic quality of God’s word-event in terms of the irregular side of God’s word-event in a post–foundational, analogical, and discursive sense, both sociocritically and hermeneutically. By critically learning from Barth’s theology of Israel and the Word of God, an Asian irregular theology develops as a specific East Asian theology of God’s discursive act in engagement with the sociopolitical reality of the minjung and the religious-cultural life word of bamboo (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism).158 Asian irregular theologians who underscore the renewed direction of the second generation of Asian minjung theology read Karl Barth in light of his political radicalism and the hermeneutical project of Jesus as a sociobiography with ochlos-minjung. In this light an Asian irregular theology develops an intercultural theory of interpretation and analogy as it engages the multireligious cultural life world and sociopolitical reality of minjung. A perspective on irregular horizon of God’s narrative in extra-biblical sphere shapes and underscores specificity of Asian irregular theology, as it further develops critically Barth’s theology of words and lights in the extra-ecclesial sphere in profound conversation with World Religions. From the standpoint of the irregular horizon of God’s narrative, emphasis is placed on relating an analogical language of similarity-in-dissimilarity to the dissimilar discourse of those who are historically and socially on the margin. Their discourse which is marginalized and excluded has to be retrieved by an analysis of knowledge and power in interdependence, or a hermeneutical circle. This is because God’s word-event can be constantly heard in the life world of those who are colonized and reified by the power of politics and economics, and the ideology of mass media. The Word of God in Jesus Christ cannot be properly understood apart from God’s act of speech throughout all the ages in their multiple horizons. This biblical view of word-event underlines and highlights an Asian irregular, analogical-discursive hermeneutic that engages God’s word-event to our ancestors in many and various ways with respect to the life world of cultural religious classics and the sociopolitical reality of minjung. Neo-Confucian’s theory of interpretation—the critical and analytical investigation of worldly affairs to promote extending knowledge to their root—is retrieved and appropriated to develop an Asian analogical theology undergirding the irregularity of God’s speech event in Asian religious classics. The world of intratextuality is interconnected with people’s extra-textual life in the public sphere. A participatory act in the world of intratextuality as well as people’s extra-textual life through a critical ref lection of worldly affairs is at the heart of an Asian irregular-discursive theology. This theological imagination recognizes diverse expressions in relation to the truth about God who continues to speak in favor of God’s minority people—minjung in the public sphere and through the life world of religious outsiders.

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From an irregular hermeneutics in analogical-discursive configuration in multireligious horizons, this Asian irregular theology attempts to critically appreciate Barth’s insight into Word extra muros ecclesiae (outside the ecclesial sphere) in light of irregularity of viva vox evangelii. Here, Barth’s theology is not merely a theology of positivist revelation. There is a prophetic dimension to Barth’s theology in openness toward the world in light of God’s reconciliation with the world in Christ. Nevertheless, it is certain that Barth’s approach to religious outsiders assumes a theocentric and revelational approach without fully engaging a non-Christian understanding of the ultimate reality, humanity, and world. Luther’s statement—Sola experientia [verbum Dei] facit theologum (only the experience of the Word of God makes us theologians)—functions as a corrective to Barth’s theological lack of experiential self-understanding of the irregular dimension of God’s word-event in analogical-discursive profile. Emphasis on the roles of life experience and understanding is salient and central in the construction of Asian theology in systematic-hermeneutical fashion. An Asian irregular deliberation of God’s word-event is always reinterpreted and renewed as it engages in the human experience of God’s continuing work in the world, especially in recognition of and solidarity with the discourse and social praxis of those on the margin. The limitation of this aspect and ignoring human experience and dissimilar discourse of minjung is obvious in Barth’s theology of Israel as well as in his ref lection of lights and words in the reconciled world. Furthermore, Barth does not manage to integrate a discursive dimension of those on the underside of the history into his hermeneutical ref lection on God’s act of speech. Here Barth ignores analyzing the interplay between politicaleconomic-cultural power and theological-epistemological knowledge. Subsequently, Barth’s theology of God’s Word is critically accepted and renewed in terms of a theological discourse of parrhēsia (speaking frankly: Mark 8:32).159 This is enacted by paying attention to minjung discourse and events through which God may speak to the Christian church for the sake of those who are marginalized, victimized, and voiceless. God’s act of speech must be heard and recognized in the face of Lazarusminjung who are burdened by the sin of the powerful. This perspective analogously refers to Jesus as the Lamb of God who is burden by the sin of the powerful and the privileged in the world. Jesus also utilizes the secular and dissimilar language of ochlos in the service of the truth of the kingdom of God. Asian irregular theology critically develops Barth’s theology of God’s faithfulness to Israel by positively integrating the Jewish “No” to Jesus Christ as Jewish faithfulness to the Torah in light of Jesus’ faithfulness to Torah. To overcome Barth’s theology of Israel, an Asian irregular model of Jesus’ socio-biography emphasizes Dan 7 and Isa 53 to highlight the Jewish character of Jesus in the synoptic gospels. Jesus Christ, as the One who brings of good news to minjung (Luke 4:18), does not exist without connection to the Jewish people. He is the border-crossing person,

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bringing a light of revelation to the Gentiles and glory to his people Israel (Luke 2:32). In critical engagement with theology of Karl Barth, Asian irregular theology understands his theology as an example. Along this line the Asian irregular theology means a protest and transformation of conservative neoorthodox Barthianism. Critically learning from Barth, but challenging and transcending him, Asian irregular theology hermeneutically reverses Barth’s epistemology (“ fides quaerens intellectum”—faith seeks understanding) in light of analogical and discursive epistemology (“Verbum Dei quaerens intelletcum et dialogum”). The Word of God seeks understanding and dialog with the life world of religious classics and God’s minority people in an East Asian context.160

CH A P T E R

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Reconstructing God’s Narrative as Mission in a Hermeneutical-Intercultural Configuration

We have discussed God’s mission as word-event in a wider spectrum and integrated several important issues and challenges—coming from postmodern theory, economic globalization, postcolonial suspicion of Christian mission, and World Christianity—into the theological–missional reframing of God’s narrative. Thus we have attempted to reinterpret missio Dei in a wider horizon by reconstructing a mission of word-event. This theological reconstruction dealt with a theological-Trinitarian discussion of missio Dei in light of word-event and actualized Christian mission of God’s narrative in a postmodern-pluralist context. In seeking God’s narrative in covenant with Israel, we have proposed a hermeneutical ref lection of word event in a post–Shoah configuration that facilitates our engagement with Jewish community and religious outsiders. Therefore, a missiology of word event in a wider horizon pertains to several public and intercultural issues where the classic concept of missio Dei left off. Having considered this, we have attempted to reinterpret western Protestant theologians such as Martin Luther and Karl Barth from the missional perspective of the activity of God’s word event. Their theological legacy was missionally and interculturally taken up and developed toward a missiology of word-event in the world of many religions and cultures. We revived Luther and Barth as inspirers for us to develop a public missiology of God’s narrative in a prophetic-diaconal contour regarding Jewish-Christian relationship, interreligious exchange, and political-ethical responsibility. The current chapter investigates mission of God’s narrative from the perspective of an intercultural hermeneutic. In discussing several models (accommodation, indigenization, inculturation, and contextualization) we will deal with the relation of Christian narrative to culture in light of an analogical hermeneutic. Here a theology of word event will be constructed in an analogical and intercultural perspective. A construction of a new hermeneutic of God’s narrative in an analogical-discursive framework will be undertaken in localized, intercultural, and liberative manner. This hermeneutical view will be critically engaged in theologians of

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religious pluralism and postcolonial theology. My hermeneutical ref lection of God’s narrative as mission will be proposed for the sake of emancipation and inculturation when it comes to engagement with non-Christian scriptures and people’s life marginalized at the grassroots. Christian Mission in Relation of God’s Narrative to Culture When the Gospel comes to a non-Western culture, Christian mission has to consider certain cultural-religious factors in order to translate the Gospel according to the indigenous pattern, custom, language, and belief systems. The translation of the Bible into the vernacular calls for adopting indigenous cultural criteria for the biblical message.1 Because of the translatability of the Christian narrative, Christianity is capable of conversing with different cultures and languages. In this process of the translation and interpretation of the Christian narrative, the socioeconomic system is an indispensable factor in constituting and directing Christian mission. Christian mission integrates cultural religious factors (inculturation or intercultration) as well as socioeconomic factors (justice and emancipation) to promote mission of God’s Word in the public sphere. An integrative model of mission of word-event endorses a construction of local and particular theologies in diverse streams and trends without losing a prophetic sensitivity to the reality of cultural conservatism and backwardness. The initiative of act of divine speech is to be interpreted in connection to human life in a way that is inf luenced and shaped by the culturalreligious reality. Taking up the cultural reality of human life, a Christian theology of mission recognizes the analogical dimension of culture in witness to God’s narrative and transforms its limitation in light of God’s reconciliation that moves toward God’s final consummation of the world. In the context of the Third-World churches or World Christianity, a framework of inculturation or indigenization bid farewell to the Eurocentric or North Americanocentric framework. To the degree that the subject matter of the Christian narrative is transculturally amenable, an exchange of different theological perspectives and directions is meaningful and needed for ecumenical and global fellowship among World churches. An encounter of different horizons between the biblical and extrabiblical narratives is an ongoing conversation. This conversation creates a new space of contextualized and enriched meaning of the biblical narrative as it converses with people’s experience and wisdom in the cultural– religious life world. In the process of the conf luence and coalescence of different and multiple horizons and orientations, an interpretative model is formed. This interpretive model offers a process of liberatively and practically appropriating meaning and adopting critical distanciation from questionable and alien elements of the cultural world. In the interpretative engagement, a missiology of word-event strives to avoid the danger of western absolutism and indigenous relativism.

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Theology is culturally shaped and conditioned; however, God’s narrative in the grace of Christ is more than culture. Christ’s relationship to culture is typologically expressed by Christ above, of, against, in paradoxical relationship to and transforming culture in Niebuhr’s fashion.2 In Niebuhr’s typology, however, there is a lack of developing the relationship between God’s narrative in the Gospel and culture from a hermeneutical-analogical perspective. In dealing with Christ and culture, our approach sees culture as an anthropological-synchronic location, while tradition is seen as a reservoir for the effective transmission of cultural materials. The word “culture” is derived from the Latin cultivare (“to till the soil”). The meaning of culture is thus connected with the practice of cultivation. The Enlightenment concept of culture tends to assume that one’s own culture comprises the norm and the standard by which the practices of all other cultures are to be judged. Such ethnocentrism is challenged by the notion of cultural relativism that is raised and advocated in the circle of cultural anthropologists. Here, the assumption is that culture is a historically given reality that normalizes existent cultural social orders and inf luences members of a cultural group. But this perspective tends to isolate culture from the ongoing social process and the human agents actively participating in and transforming it. A better interpretation of culture lies in the description of culture as webs of significance that provide an orientation capable of integrating a historical and social description of the culture. As Geertz states, “[culture] denotes a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which [people] communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.”3 Culture, as a historically transmitted social construct, comes into interaction with people who are involved in communicating and producing cultural knowledge and meaning. In the socially constructed world, there exists a plurality of diverse narratives held in commonality, contradiction, and disorientation. Culture is conceptualized as the sociocultural construction of human creation that fills the world with meaning.4 An interpretive model of culture considers a historically transmitted pattern of meaning in terms of “socially constructed worlds humans inhabit.”5 In Tillich’s phrase, symbols used in the interpretation of culture “participate in its meaning and power.”6 Christian theology, seen from an anthropological-synchronic perspective, can be viewed as a form of cultural activity. Culture is a human universal, a defining feature of human life in the cultural-synchronic sphere. If theology takes place within a culture and is bound to a culture-specific activity, a theological reflection of the Word of God becomes a specific culture-bound expression of it. The culture-specific nature of divine truth is grounded in the divine assumption of human flesh, namely in the Jewish cultural life world. Identifying theology as a part of culture situates it within a historicalsocial framework that searches for the meaning of the Christian message

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within it. The Christian narrative is a correlation of the human cultural situation. A theology of culture is a form of correlation with human historical-universal reality and social-particular reality. According to Tillich, the contents of the Christian faith are explained “through existential questions and theological answers in mutual interdependence.” 7 Tillich’s model of correlation argues that “religion is the substance of culture,” while “culture is the form of religion.” “Language is the basic cultural creation.”8 A correlationist approach to theology as a context-specific activity provides an affirmative way to understand the relation of theology to culture. Cultural differences in time and place address situation-specific forms of the theological expression of the Christian message.9 It is certain that a correlationist framing of Christian theology as a specific activity of culture is not adequate to ref lect the historical aspect of shaping and transmitting cultural materials to human life. Tradition refers to what transmits the cultural materials and codified documents, and mediates the process of cultural and linguistic transition. In the process of appropriating cultural materials, one is already inf luenced by the prior history of the material’s effects. However, despite some limitations, a correlationist approach to theology and culture does facilitate a discussion of Christ’s relation to culture in the missiological model of accommodation, indigenization, inculturation, and contextualization. A model of accommodation (Christ of culture pattern) adapts or adjusts the essential elements of the Christian message to the different cultural languages, symbols, and illustrations of those who receive the Gospel. African scholars, such as Laurenti Magesa, who search for theological accommodation, attempt to concretely re-root the Christian narrative in African life situations. Their slogan is expressed in the statement: Let Christ and his Spirit seize, capture, and possess people in their cultural life settings and establish a true koinonia in Christ’s relation to people of African culture.10 The task of authentic theological accommodation in Africa implies “a radical revolution” to create “new ways of interpreting and understanding the Word of God.”11 This implies a new task of mission of the Word of God. Here, a theology of African accommodation begins from African cultural roots in such a way that inculturation takes the African culture in light of Christ as its basis in African theological articulation of the biblical narrative. This task of inculturational accommodation requires a careful investigation of African culture as a whole, as well as an intensive historical study of the western culture that shapes and wraps the message of Christ. Through this intercultural study, the divine message—the subject matter of the Christian religion—is separated from its cultural wrappings. Hence, a sincere project is undertaken by incarnating the message into the African cultural heritage and African worldviews.12 A famous expression of indigenization has been the three selves: selfsupport, self-government, and self-propagation (proposed by Henry Venn

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and Rufus Anderson and developed by Roland Allen). In this model of indigenization, arrangements should be made “in reference to the ultimate settlement of the Native Church, upon the ecclesiastical basis of an indigenous Episcopate, independent of foreign aid or superintendence.”13 Allen accentuates an incarnational model of Christian mission as opposed to a view of financial mission support. He criticizes the emphasis on material establishment before the spreading of the gospel. Some missionaries are interested in purchasing land and establishing foreign missions on a material basis. It also implies a foreign domination over the native mind. In this regard, to become a Christian would be to submit to foreign domination. However, Paul’s mission is directed against this establishment of a western religion. God desired to reveal God’s self to us in the form of a servant. God made a material body in the Word and the Spirit for the manifestation of God’s love to all. This notion of incarnation must govern missionary thought and principle. Christianity is a principle of life rather than a western institution. As Allen insists, “That is why the religion of Christ, who is Himself a Sacrament, is sacramental, and all our use of material things is sacramental.”14 Allen’s model contributes to the effort of overcoming the limitations of the colonial church. Missionary domestication is sharply rejected. Mission must be an ongoing process by the hands of the young church rather than by missionaries.15 On the other hand, it is certain that indigenization is vulnerable to essentializations of conservative and backward-looking elements in a traditional society. The inculturation model, favored by the Catholic missiological circle, addresses a marvelous and extraordinary exchange between Christ and culture; a culture is transformed by the gospel as the gospel is re-expressed in terms of the culture of the recipients. This model of inculturation accentuates the polycentric nature of Christianity that can assume the many cultures of its adherents. However, the interpretive dimension of a coalescence of an exchange horizon between the gospel message and cultural expressions tends to become a mere issue of translation or natural immersion. As Aloysius Pieris observes, “a Christian community tends to appropriate the symbols and the mores of the people around it only to the degree it immerses itself in their lives and struggles. That is to say, inculturation is the by-product of an involvement with the people . . .”16 In the model of contextualization, reading the signs of the times becomes an indispensable task in shaping a theology of mission in relationship to a given culture. Integrating the reciprocal interplay between culture and socioeconomic factors, contextualists adopt a more propheticcritical stance in relating the gospel to culture. The sociopolitical sphere is a dominant factor and shapes a theological discussion of Christ and culture by adopting a stand for the poor. Subsequently, feminist contextualists, such as Kwok Pui-lan, focus mostly on a critique of the patriarchal teachings and motifs in the biblical narrative and the Asian religious

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classic texts that play a significant role in oppressing women. Asian feminist theologians propose a critical view of a cultural process of re-rooting Christianity into Asian soil that would reiterate an androcentric bias.17 This emancipatory project tends to reduce the cultural life world to an ideological sphere (generating, for instance, a culture of androcentrism) that is to be transformed by human critical ref lection; however, such critical reason is also ironically shaped and conditioned by the history of effect and tradition. Feminist critical reason or emancipatory reason exercises the critique of ideology, as if it is privileged to exist outside the iron cage that reifies and colonizes human reason in the public sphere. Emancipatory contextualists claim to be privileged to exercise and idealize their critical ref lection without paying attention to their own “reified and colonized” reason. However, inculturationists, in accommodating the Gospel into their own life situations, tend to sidestep immanent critical reason when it comes to patriarchal discursive structures and religious institutions. By accounting for tradition as a dynamic transmitter and mediator, classic texts, or works of art become the paradigm that takes into account the human universal appeal of traditional materials; their history is a history of effect overarching and inseparable in human cultural life. The notion of tradition accounts for continuity in the process of transmission without its being disrupted by human life in its social location. It is certain that one cannot escape the inf luence of tradition as transmission and effect. But historical evidence also indicates that ruptures and discontinuity in the process of transmission do occur. What is transmitted is specifically shaped by and bound up with a conf lict of competitive interest; tradition as a history of effect lies under suspicion of interconnection: of normalizing institutionalized power and social knowledge. A postmodern reading of transmitted materials and codified discourse holds in check a tendency to overemphasize tradition as an autonomous transmission. In the same historical circumstance there is both cultural conf lict and competitive interest. In the construction of a theology of culture in correlationist terms it is hard to maintain the inf luence of the initiative of God’s word-event on the theological relation with culture from a diachronic-synchronic perspective. Here, discerning theology’s connection to God’s initiative on human cultural life calls for an interpretive-analogical approach. Analogical Reframing of God’s Narrative to Cultural World The 1996 Nairobi Statement on Worship and Culture creates four basic categories: transcultural, contextual, counter-cultural, and cross-cultural for articulating the relationship between Christian worship and culture.18 The source of the transculturality of Christian worship is Christ’s resurrection that is shared across the globe and is also present in the Eucharist. The theological source of the Word of God, which is fully revealed in Christ

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as attested by the Scripture, includes the ecumenical creeds, the Lord’s Prayer, and sacraments in the Trinitarian name. The contextual character of Christian worship is based on the mystery of Christ’s incarnation. A model of contextualization involves “re-expressing components of Christian worship with something from a local culture that has an equal meaning, value, and function.”19 Taking a step further than contextualization, the Nairobi Statement states that local churches practice “the method of creative assimilation” by “adding pertinent components of local culture to the liturgical ordo in order to enrich its original core.”20 Christian worship is counter-cultural to the degree that every culture is vulnerable to sinful conditions and accommodated to all types of oppression and social injustice. Christian worship is cross-cultural in that all the churches on the globe can share Christian worship taken from various cultures. This cross-cultural and ecumenical aspect “helps enrich the whole church and strengthen the sense of the communio of the Church.”21 The relationship of the liturgical and cultural expression of the Christian gospel as stated in the Nairobi Statement can further our consideration of analogical expression in dealing with the relationship of God’s narrative in the gospel of Christ to cultural life world. Taking the relation between Christ and culture from the study of inculturation, we become aware that the analogical power of language is not properly considered when expressing the biblical narrative in extra-biblical life situations. In a study of the Christian narrative as it relates to a particular culture, it is important to explore the interpretive-analogical model by hermeneutically refurbishing the relationship between inculturation and emancipation. There are diverse approaches, perspectives, and methodologies in the interpretation of an encounter between the Christian message and the non-biblical cultural narrative. An interpretive model should aim at a description that denotes a realized experience of understanding in an ongoing conversation between Christ and culture in different times and places. When properly understood, all ref lections in which the subject matter of the Christian narrative is shaped by social existential questioning of its relation with the cultural world assume a hermeneutical-analogical character and concern. An interpretive model in an analogical configuration admits “the ground of real finitude and radical historicity in all hermeneutical understanding.”22 The living God that we find in Jesus Christ constitutes the material norm for Christian faith. The Scripture as a formal-narrative form bears witness to the living, free, and transcendent initiative of the Word of God. The Spirit’s internal speaking through the Scripture implies a contextual testimony when it is related to a reader who is situated within a specific historical-cultural life world. Subsequently, God is free to speak to the faith community through an external testimony of the Spirit working in the cultural world. Whatever is received is received and understood according to the condition of the recipient. Nevertheless, God’s Word as missional event is to

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be grasped as mystery and freedom, communicable in language even as it moves the limitations of human expression in an open-ended, eschatological direction. The analogy of God’s word-event that is grounded in God’s self-communication in the humanity of Jesus Christ integrates dissimilar secular and cultural expressions about mystery of God’s kingdom in light of God’s reconciliation with the world. An analogy of the relationship between Christ and culture articulates a transformed horizon of the Christian narrative in engaging the cultural world. A hermeneutical-analogical interpretive model makes different cultural life expressions more amenable to engaging the subject matter of the Christian narrative in light of God’s speech event. Cultural things are then connected to God’s Word as missional event in a relationship of dependence. In this light, Newbigin is right in saying that “the only way in which the gospel can challenge our culturally conditioned interpretations of it is through the witness of those who read the Bible with minds shaped by other cultures.”23 God as the subject of speaking makes and weaves the cultural world analogously relevant to mission of God’s narrative. Hermeneutically, the cultural analogatum (that which is analogized) is constituted linguistically and discursively by the activity of God’s Word that comes, as the word of forgiveness and reconciliation, to communicate with people in the cultural-religious world. Cultural life is dependent on the word of reconciliation and consummation of the world. It is the analogans that makes the analogy. If the Word of God in a biblical sense means Word of this Speaker, then God speaks of God’s self to the world and uses people for God’s speaking. God’s speaking in God’s descent into humanity grounds and enables an analogy of relationship in speaking of God.24 Subsequently, the Word of God as the analogans puts a language of similarity in relationship with God’s Word that likewise embraces the discourse of dissimilarity of those who are on the margins. Jesus’ Narrative of Parable and God’s Kingdom In the context of the biblical narrative, Jesus’ language of parables is a central form of expression. Jesus’ use of parables for the kingdom of God indicates that there is an analogical relation between Christ and culture. The merit of this particular, localized hermeneutic is that it takes the historical-cultural context with full seriousness regarding the analogical relationship of Christ to culture. The language of analogy or parable is characterized by approximation, tentativeness, and open-endedness. Analogical and parabolic narrative redescribes reality in terms of a powerful and creative tension between similarity and dissimilarity. The Word of God is the infinite horizon of enabling catalogy (God’s descending way) and analogy (human ascending way), constituting a hermeneutical circulation of similar discourse on God and dissimilar

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discourse of the margins through which God speaks. Thus, a hermeneutic in an analogical-discursive manner brings the dynamic tension between similarity and dissimilarity to God’s reconciliation with the cultural world. “I spoke to the prophets [in parables]; it was I who multiplied visions” (Hos 12:10). Analogy is a language for speaking about a God who has multiple visions in the human world while avoiding idolatry and supporting people’s experience of God in an existential and concrete manner. The life and death of Jesus Christ is a parabolic event of God’s kingdom, a parable of God’s word-event. Gospel can be understood as the event of correspondence between God and Christ’s revelation. Jesus makes use of secular parables to teach the truth of the kingdom of God. A language of analogy in the biblical perspective is related to Jesus’ narrative of parable. God’s narrative in the gospel of Jesus is woven in secular and discursive style. For Crossan, Jesus’ parables intend to subvert the world. The parables are also polyvalent.25 The polyvalence of parables, their emphasis on subversion, and their disorienting character lead to the dark night of story through the excessiveness of via negativa.26 Ricoeur, however, views narrative of parable more positively, as a surplus of meaning. Parables work on a pattern of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation; a parable begins in the ordinary world, but in the course of the story a radically different perspective is introduced. This perspective provocatively disorients the audience so that the interaction and tension between the two competing viewpoints of ordinary orientation and extraordinary disorientation lead to a constructive redescription of life reality in the world. A surplus of meaning undergirds Jesus’ parables as texts that refigure reality and bring about a transformative new understanding of God, world, and self. God’s kingdom is described through narrative structure in a metaphorical process that discloses the poetic character of the language of faith. A discourse of parable points beyond its immediate signification toward the reality of the Wholly Other.27 At issue in parabolic language is an analogical opposition to all forms of idolatry and absolutism. This opposition constructs a new orientation toward reality. However, Ricoeur’s theory is not adequate to understand Gospel as the parable of God’s kingdom because for him, the Gospel is only about what the kingdom of God is like. In a theological discussion about God, Karl Barth contends that there is an analogy of faith (Rom 1: 23). God, unsearchable and unreachable, is expressed in language with the help of analogy. Theological talk about God which speaks of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross is described by Paul as the ‘word of the cross.’ This theological talk is plunged into the death of Jesus Christ on the cross by discourse. The analogy of the cross refers to God as the one who accompanies Jesus’ life and participates in Jesus’ victimization as he resists the reality of evil. Similarly, God’s relationship to the cultural world is speakable and expressible in light of

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God’s word of reconciliation with the world. Other cultural language in light of this word of reconciliation can contain an analogical expression of divine reality. From a hermeneutical perspective, interpretation is a reality-in-process, which drives in an ever new direction with regard to the interaction between Christ and culture with an open-ended perspective. The conf luence and coalescence of multiple horizons takes place when the interpreter allows his/her critical ref lection to be vexed, provoked, and challenged by the claim of the subject matter of the Christian message interacting with a cultural life horizon.28 An encounter between the biblical text and cultural-religious texts gives an excess or surplus of meaning.29 In this encounter, a new meaning is sharpened and enriched in light of the appropriation of meaning as well as a self-ref lective disengagement with ideologically distorted forms of discourse in the textual materials and documents. God’s mission as narrative integrates a hermeneutical-discursive exploration of connecting the Christian narrative with cultural discourse through the activity of word-event. The Word of God and the Analogical Hermeneutic Translation and interpretation are allowed and relativized in light of the freedom of God’s Word. They take place within the effective cultural history by retrieving similarity between biblical story and cultural-religious discourse. In this analogical language, a language of dissimilarity of the margins finds its validity in light of the irregularity of divine act of speech. A language of analogy, structured between similarity and dissimilarity, involves a dialectical interaction between appropriation, a critical distanciation for the self-renewal, and transformative recognition of the other. The culture of the margins can be reconstructed in light of missional ref lection of God’s narrative. This discursive aspect renews a traditional concept of analogy based on the analogy of relation and the analogy of proportionality in order to articulate a relationship of God’s narrative in communication with the world. Here, analogy is introduced as an attempt to overcome the ambiguity of multiple meaning in speech; therefore it is considered as a middle ground between univocal and equivocal concepts in order to serve the freedom of God’s word-event in love and reconciliation in accompaniment with religious outsiders. A theological analogy of God’s advent, which articulates God’s coming to humanity in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, emphasizes an instance of a still greater similarity between God and humanity within a great dissimilarity. In Jesus Christ, God becomes speakable insofar as Jesus is the personal parable of God the Father. Thus God’s Word comes close to humanity in human words. The analogy of God’s advent, which underlines address

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and the narrative character of language, became a language event. God brings God’s self into language or humanly to language. God becomes a word of our language within the confines of human language.30 In light of the analogy of advent, Jüngel reverses a traditional principle of analogy—receiving something according to the mode of the receiver. Hence, he argues that something is received according to the speaking of God. However, it is inadequate to overemphasize the downward movement of God’s coming into human language (catalogy) without considering human life grounded in the sociocultural sphere. God, as the infinite horizon of catalogy and analogy, utilizes and embraces the dissimilar discourse of those on the downside of the history to break into human language by socializing the analogical imagination in connection with the sociopolitical reality of human life. Accordingly, Tracy argues that a language of analogy is defined as a language of ordered relationships that articulates similarity-in-difference and produces some harmony in the several analogs constituting the whole of reality. In Tracy’s concept of analogy, a negative aspect in talking about God’s event comes to the fore. By negating any slackening of its accommodation to cultural discourse, it becomes articulated as a principle of intensification. The ultimate incomprehensibility of the Word of God provides the focal meaning for developing a prophetic language of analogies-indifference in the context of multiple religious life situations.31 When this negative power of analogical language in the relationship between Christ and culture is lost, analogical language degenerates into a mere likeness between Christ and culture.32 However, Tracy’s analogical imagination is not capable of configuring the discourse of the dissimilarity in the life of religious outsiders through which God speaks to the church. The interplay between human knowledge and legitimate power structure must be analyzed in terms of considering marginalized and suppressed discourse. A talk of relationship between God and the cultural world in an analogical–discursive style strives to transcend the principle, that is,“whatever is received is received according to the condition of the receiver.”33 Jesus uses the dissimilar discourse of those on the margins and integrates it into the witness of God’s narrative in the kingdom of God; thus the social existential condition of the receiver is renewed and transformed as it encounters the horizon of living voice of God and the dissimilar discourse of the other in a non-Christian world. Negative-analogical dialectics can be improved upon in terms of analogical-discursive hermeneutics that have to do more with the dissimilar and irregular discourse of those who are marginalized and silenced in any social-cultural location. What is spoken of is described as a language event. Drawing upon an analogical-discursive dependence on the One who speaks, the human language of analogy has an eschatological reserve, becoming a pendulum that never arrives at a final conclusion. An analogy of viva vox Dei expresses God’s arrival in the cultural world as a word-event. The analogy

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of the irregularity of word-event corresponds to God’s relationship to the world in a completely new light: seeing God’s world relationship in an eschatological light. The analogy of God’s relation to the cultural world as a language event is contextualized, circumvented, and made open ended by attentively and analogically considering the freedom of viva vox evangelii in relation to the cultural world. A discussion of the analogy structure of the parable belongs to the general hermeneutical problem. The parable is regarded as an extended metaphor, which can, in turn, be called an abbreviated parable. A parable narrates while a metaphor coalesces the narrative into a single word. But the narrative structure is also immanent in the metaphor that is understood as the “epiphora according to analogy.”34 If the language is originally metaphorical and parabolic, the translation of the truth of what exists in language has an analogical character itself as it is involved in the process of appropriation and critical distanciation for self-renewal and transformative recognition of the other through transcultural-linguistic mediation. Both metaphor and parable have in common addressing speech and discourse. Narrative of parable in this regard speaks about the kingdom of God and God comes to the world in this addressing discourse of parable. This language is distinct because of a higher degree of directness rather than a kind of mysterious veiling.35 Living metaphor provokes new meanings and insights; it implies an intuitive perception of similarityin-dissimilarity. God’s mission of word-event, as a living root metaphor, assembles and frames subordinate images in an integrative-constructive way without being reduced to univocal meaning or becoming anarchic. Scientific language is likewise full of metaphors that guide scientific thought and research.36 The parables, as extended metaphors, have an extravagant nature, which expands their meaning by intensifying their metaphorical nature.37 Analogy grips us and uses the character of address and discourse found in metaphor and parable. Analogy as a process of speech and discourse becomes a socializing cultural phenomenon by creating a fellowship between the speaker and the hearer. As social-cultural, metaphors and parables express more in language than they say literally. The language of metaphor and parable purports to be an event that allows for creative freedom in producing multiple meanings. It corresponds to God’s wordevent. In a parable, language is focused in such a way that the discourse becomes concrete in language itself and thus defines anew people’s lives as addressed in their own existence. In his discourse on the kingdom of God, Jesus utilizes cultural parables and narratives to address its message by recognizing, renewing, and empowering people’s lives. Jesus’ narrative parables of the kingdom of God become instructive and foundational for an analogical reframing of the relationship of God’s word-event to the cultural life horizon. Something happens in and through parable and discourse, so that the metaphor has a tendency toward word-event. All language forms of faith participate in

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the structure of analogical-discursive language. Cultural-religious forms of parables and narratives serve analogously as the language in witnessing to mission of kingdom of God. As a language event parable stands in correspondence to the mission of God’s narrative speaking to the ecclesial sphere through the extra-biblical cultural world. If the kingdom of God is like a treasure in a field, then God’s mission as narrative can be explored like a treasure hidden in a field of culture. Culture is the place in which the treasure of God’s mission as narrative event is hidden. This is the place in which Jesus’ message of God’s kingdom addresses first the tax collectors and public sinners, massa perditionis. Jesus’ mission for God’s kingdom is expressed in his parabolicsubversive practice by articulating and concretizing a present reality of God’s word-event in a still greater similarity for his people marginalized in the cultural religious world. The traditional concept of analogy as the via eminentiae and as the middle ground between univocity (anthropomorphism) and equivocity (apophatic-negative theology) is renewed and reinterpreted in light of the relational transcendence that is validated by missiology of God’s wordevent. An analogical-discursive way of asserting the relationship between God and the cultural world transforms the “beyond human speech” aspect of God (because of the great dissimilarity between God and the world) into linguistic talk about God and the other for the sake of relational transcendence. God, unsearchable and ineffable (Rom 11: 34–36), comes to us in Jesus Christ as the mysterious Topos of the world. Jesus Christ is the historical and concrete analogy of the relationship between God and human beings or analogia Dei, that is, the Word become f lesh. In light of the divine freedom and reconciling love, it is important to critically and constructively transcend the analogy of being as a creaturely upward movement to God and the analogy of revelation (catalogy) as the downward movement from above for the sake of the relational transcendence of God’s word-event. God is known when God opens God’s self in dialog with the human world in terms of speaking, making human language the possible analogical medium to the mystery and freedom of God’s word-event in light of Christ’s reconciliation and the coming of God. God’s word event expresses itself in the language forms of parable, discourse, and analogy by engaging people’s lives in the cultural world. The activity of God’s speech through the Word and the Spirit relates to the cultural life world and narrative in an analogical relationship in negativity, creativity, and transformative freedom. All talk about the Word of God is related to human linguisticality. God is not known except through the linguistic horizon of the diverse streams in which God reveals God’s self by wordevents. In fact, the God who speaks is not received as any special, supernatural Word that is different from human speech. The gospel comes to us in the form of a linguistic communication associated with analogical expression of the truth of the kingdom of God. This aspect describes the all-important place of analogical linguisticality in human experience of the truth of the

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Word of God. Speaking of God means speaking of God’s all-determining horizon as conceived of in Torah, God’s self-interpretation in Jesus Christ, and initiative of God’s word as missional event for the world. This discourse of God takes place presently and actively in every event of communication and discourse. When properly understood, the subject matter of the Christian narrative transpires in missional discourse and communication and shaped by social existential questioning of its relation with the cultural world. It assumes a hermeneutical-analogical character, admitting the ground of real finitude and radical social historicity in all human understanding. The true nature of word and language in general as fulfilled in the gospel as the pro-missio Dei. Here it is important to integrate the transmission of the Word of God as the history of effects in light of the word-event that took place in Jesus’ parable narrative. The Word of God is interpreted as a history of effecting human existence. The true meaning of language as the communication unlocks existence, making authentic existence possible. “The primary phenomenon in the realm of understanding is not understanding of language, but understanding through language.”38 Furthermore, all words used in ordinary language have more than one meaning—polysemy. Discourse constitutes a particular meaning effect. The expressivity of language constitutes the marvel of language, perhaps a mystery of language. The act of speaking produces and generates new utterance. As a matter of fact, the essential aspect and goal of language is the discourse. God’s Word as generating and producing a new meaning transpires in every speech act. God’s Word as transformative event tends to be charged with surplus of multiple meanings. The upsurge of saying into our daily communication is the very mystery of language. Saying is the openness, the opening out of language, that is to say, language in celebration.39 In our discussion of relationship between Christ and culture Niebuhr’s typology of Christ and culture needs to be integrated and hermeneutically renewed in light of the activity of God’s mission of word-event. Culture analogically serves God’s Word as mission. A missiology of word-event considers the dissimilar discourse of religious outsiders, and reveals the ideological interplay between religious knowledge and institutionally legitimized power that shapes and conditions people’s lives in cultural-linguistic life situations. This negative and critical distanciation (a prophetic and emancipatory dimension of analogy) also creates and endorses the mission of word-event by recognizing and taking up an analogical-duscursive dimension of the cultural narrative of people’s lives in a mutireligious context. God’s Narrative in Ethical Configuration: Emancipation and Interculturation Political, liberationist, feminist, and postcolonial theologies have clearly demonstrated their problem with history (or tradition) and cultural history (the

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present social, economic, political, and ecclesial situation). They apply the hermeneutics of doubt and the theory of deconstruction to all human realms including ideology, dominion, gender, race, and class issues in theological interpretation. Their challenge demonstrates not merely correction, but advocates the transformation of reality in terms of emancipatory praxis. The hermeneutic of analogy as similarity-in-difference is likewise involved in articulating a sociocritical dimension of discourse when used to analyze the power-knowledge interconnection that normalizes a cultural social life situation. Culture is not only imbued with institutionalized power and knowledge as something that causes social events, behaviors, institutions, or processes. Culture also provides a context within which they can be intelligible. An analogical-discursive description of the culture analyzes social knowledge, institutionalized power structure, and the interconnection between the intellectual and ideological sphere and the socioeconomic reality. Humans use language, culture, or religion to give meaning to new domains of thought. We need to explicate a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures that are at once strange, irregular, and implicit. Historical-linguistic traditions shape and condition human existence and understanding but the ever-changing circumstances of life, culture, and history make this shaping incomplete and limited. Sociocritical analysis and analogical-discursive language meet in the sociocultural and public sphere. Sociocritical dialectics imbued with interest in emancipation are open to analogical-discursive hermeneutics. Without dialectics, analogy would remain in the abstract; disengaged from the public life in socioeconomic realm. Without analogy, dialectics would be an identification of God and humanity (as in the case of Hegel’s concept of absolute knowledge or the case of Marx’s naturalization of humanity and the humanization of the nature). A missiology of word event develops both God’s self-communication and human speech about God in a social-cultural location as a languagediscursive event. God comes as word-event in Torah and God’s selfrevelation in Jesus Christ, addressing and interrupting the church and people in an extra-ecclesial sphere in light of Christ’s reconciliation, that is, Jesus Christ is the Word of God, Parable or analogia Dei, integrating and appropriating secular, dissimilar parables, and discourses so that they witness to the truth of the kingdom of God. The ethical configuration of God’s word-event comes from the structure of God’s kingdom, which became a reality in Jesus’ mission of resistance and reconciliation in his sociobiographical accompaniment with ochlos-minjung, God’s minority people. Analogical-discursive hermeneutics in light of God’s word-event articulate the intersubjectivity of Christian discursive ethics centered on the human orientation on God and human freedom in fellowship and solidarity with the other. Analogical-discursive hermeneutic accentuates that socioeconomic factors effect and characterize existential intentionality and preunderstanding

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when a person understands a text and the cultural world. This perspective incorporates a sociocritical theory of life world and emancipation into the theory of interpretation. A theory of interpretation does not need to exclude the totality of life in the cultural and public context. Rather, it presupposes and integrates the complexities of life in a hermeneutical circle through analysis, reconstruction, appropriation, and distanciation regarding the public sphere of many cultures and religions. Subsequently, pursuing of a reconstructed life situation within socioeconomic realms implies tracing the cultural lived experience and life meaning grounded in the pubic location. A sociocritical hermeneutic moves à la recherche de temps perdu (seeking the time lost) to decipher the life horizon of those who are marginalized and deviate from the cultural norm and cultural religious texts; thus a sociocritical hermeneutic purports to reconstruct an emancipation project and praxis in today’s public sphere. This constitutes a hermeneutical praxis in solidarity with generations of innocent victims in light of the Exodus event and the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This hermeneutical praxis attends to the social–cultural factors that shape and determine the lives of those innocently annihilated and victimized in the public sphere, prior to envisioning an ideal communicative speech situation. The Judeo-Christian tradition is concerned with communicating and interpreting God’s word-event in public life. In light of the activity of God’s speech, the Judeo-Christian community recognizes its historical, social, and linguistic reality while at the same time experiencing limitation in the restricted and approximate understanding of freedom and mystery of God’s speech event. God’s word-event as viva vox evangelii is not exhausted into ontological understanding, but promotes its ethical preference for the community of the innocently annihilated and forsaken. Thus a discursive ethics in an analogical-discursive manner begins with analyzing the interplay between human knowledge and institutional power that has normalized the history of discrepancy. 1. A missiology of God’s narrative has an ethical configuration in an encounter between God’s Word and us, including a renewal of all creation. An ethics oriented on word-event comes from the free goodness of God who addresses us, revealing our humanity as children of God. Here human reason, emancipated by the grace of God, is empowered with hearing and participating in God’s missional drama and, as God’s ethical co-worker, implementing it in the interpersonal, public, and ecological sphere. An ethically good life lies in a vertical-horizontal dimension, establishing fellowship with God and others, as well as in an ecologicalcosmic dimension. Human fear and self-seeking destroy our relationship to nature, changing the garden keeper (Gen 2) to a ruthless exploiter. An ethics with word-event orientation upholds solidarity for the sake of emancipation. In the act of God’s narrative addressing and confrontation us, God calls us to be in solidarity with God’s minority people, moving us toward the social order of God’s kingdom. In the gospels, those healed by

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Jesus are no longer socially marginalized. The same is true of the poor, tax collectors, and prostitutes: Jesus proclaims that those who were marginalized are now included in the new order of the kingdom of God. Jesus’ sociobiography with outcasts expresses a vision of the social order of God’s kingdom that embraces religious and cultural outsiders. In the life of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God is already present, while at the same time, belonging to the future. This reveals a political profile of incarnational hermeneutics seeking to discern God’s mission of word-event in, with, and through discerning the signs of the times for the sake of the meaning of life and liberation in accompaniment with God’s suffering people.40 The Reformation doctrine of “justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ” has its origin in the Pauline letters (Rom 3:28, Gal 2:16, and Eph 2:8). These texts obviously refer to the justification of human beings. Also, they refer to acts of God that include rectifying the relationship of sinners to God. The grace of forgiveness of sin, which is Jesus’ core message of God’s kingdom, comes from God’s loving righteousness to emancipate all from sin and death. We are called, awakened, and inspired as ethically responsible selves in the encounter with the Word of God, initiating a new beginning in fellowship and solidarity with those on the margins for the sake of God’s kingdom. In Hebrew, malkuth YHWH (the kingdom of God) is primarily understood as God’s reign through the word. In the biblical concept of eschatology, the transcendence of God, which breaks into our midst here and now, is directed toward the future and looks forward to a consummation yet to come. The Word of God encompasses the central eschatological profile of the present.41 An eschatological aspect (1 Cor 15:53), which speaks about the limitation of the earthly life compared with the eternal life, does not imply devaluation, but a proper evaluation of this corruptible and mortal life. Our eternal life depends on how we live in the present. This is based on and enacted as blessing and responsibility by the life-giving Spirit of God for the other and the life of all creatures. The Word became f lesh. The command of God—Thou shalt not kill (Exod 20:13, Deut 5:17)—creates respect for and protection of life. The life of all creatures is considered as God-given for a specific purpose and under God’s special protection. The Word of God becomes f lesh is the revelation of God’s command for respecting life as well as an ethical inspiration for a bodily and ecological dimension of Christian discipleship. We live in a vertical orientation with God as well as a horizontal coordination with others in the web of all creatures.42 Hearing and participating in the missional history of Word of God, we are projected into the new life of the future. As ethical subjects witnessing to the future in which “the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord” (Num 14:21) we become a counter force to the reality of lordless powers. “God” is a word of promise, life, and hope for humanity (Rev 21: 3) finally indwelling in the whole creation (1 Cor 15: 28). Creation as the grace of God is not yet complete, but is on the way toward the final

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consummation of the creation, fighting against all obstacles to the preservation and consummation of all creatures in the kingdom of God. The apostolic exhortations (paranesis) envision the life of the faith community as experiencing the present reality of kingdom of God and anticipating the final consummation even as it stands in the midst of the old age. These exhortations promote a new social life. Befitting the mission of the faith community to society, the church has a dimension of public responsibility to inf luence the social and political order in cooperation with non-Christians. The apostolic exhortations in line with the trajectory coming out of the gospel, underline Christian ethical responsibility for the society: better communal and public life in the struggle for more social justice, more democracy, and more ecological sustainability, embodying the gospel of the kingdom of God. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”43 In the competing interest and conf lict of the public sphere, forgiveness is a new mission to society. The grace of God finds its expression in the church’s mission for the life of God’s kingdom. In shifting our present life from the progress toward death to the orientation toward life, an ethical discipleship adopts a sociocritical analysis of the infrastructure of politics, economics, and institutionalized discourses that engender a culture of death.44 2. The ethic of God’s mission as word event calls for transformative participation in God’s care of all creation: in the salvific drama of the human encounter with the Word of God, the Word of God performs many specific acts that give life. This perspective advocates for our transformative participation in the universal life act of living creatures. The whole creation exists in the hope of God’s salvation. God calls Christians God’s co-workers in protecting the life of creation from futility and decay. According to Paul, God’s salvation includes the whole creation, thus God’s salvation implies a transformation of the social order. In Romans 8:18–23, Paul poetically describes a picture of “the whole creation groaning in labor pains.” Here the whole creation is metaphorically depicted as if it were pregnant, straining toward the birth of a new world, free from futility and decay. In 1 Corinthians 15: 35–58 we perceive that Paul’s vision of the resurrection of the human body refers to the transformation of the bodies of both living and dead human beings. This idea belongs to his apocalyptic vision of Christ’s destruction of all of God’s enemies, the last of which is death (15: 20–28). Thus God’s salvation encompasses the whole creation. In Philippians 2:9–11, we read at the end of a “hymn” to Christ that, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” “to the glory of God the Father.” In Jesus Christ as the firstborn of all creation, all things in heaven and on earth were created through Him and for Him. Through Him as the head of the body, the church, God was pleased to reconcile to God’s self all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by holding together all things in Him (cf. Colossians 1.15–20).

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In this light, the forgiveness of sin cannot be properly understood apart from God’s act of transformative deliverance of the whole creation. Therefore, God’s word-event in Jesus’ death and resurrection shows God’s love for human sinners as well as God’s love for all of creation, articulating God’s power and will to defeat futility and decay everywhere in all creation. Forgiveness of sins is embedded within God’s will of saving the whole creation. In the biblical account, the creation of the animal and the human being are on the same day. An ethic with word-event is not only confined to a good life in the human realm, but also considers God’s activity in the care and protection of the life of all creatures in a universal, all-inclusive life sphere. An ethic for God’s Word as mission is characterized by respect and reverence for life in light of the life act of God or the free goodness of God; who addresses, commands, and renews us to be free in fellowship and solidarity with the other and also in the care of all creatures. All living creatures live by the life-giving Spirit of God. An ethical orientation grounded in God’s word-event expresses the transforming power of God’s love for all creation, poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5) and transforming our lives through the expansion of our love for our neighbors to embrace the creaturely world. Now that human beings are capable of faith, hope, and love through Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, all things are as they come to be through Christ and the Holy Spirit ( John 1:1–18, 1 Cor 8:5–6, and Col 1:15–20). God is the source of the faith, hope, and love that are embedded in the whole creation. We are justified and ethically transformed by God’s grace so that we can join in God’s transformative mission to the whole creation. 3. A hermeneutic of God’s mission as narrative in the analogicaldiscursive manner envisions a reconstruction of the life world of the downtrodden in the universal history that brings about emancipation and transformative recognition of religious outsiders in light of the living voice of God. Our cultural history is radically immanent and present in our contemporary society, normalizing and underlining the discursive practices, institutionalized complex, and religious worldview of the powerful in the past. An analogical-discursive theory of interpretation in a sociocritical contour focuses on deciphering the cultural documents and discursive formation of those who are buried on the downside of the universal-cultural history. This considered, history as the history of effect is to be reinterpreted as the history of discrepancy because it imposes the domination of the powerful upon the weak. Actual social existence and ideological expressions in the cultural texts must be considered and interpretation undertaken in order to rescind the metanarrative of the powerful, enhance multiples narratives of the particular and the different, and promote the full humanity of those who are burdened and voiceless. An analogical-discursive hermeneutic relates the history of effect to discourse in a social and public

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location by sharpening a language of similarity-in-dissimilarity in the study of culture, religion, and politics while critically accepting the cultural tradition as the reservoir of historically transmitted meaning. An interpretation projected in defiance of violence and injustice explains and analyzes the genesis of human knowledge and dominion by sociologically exploring social existence and competing interests. Through the mediation of cultural texts, documents, and discursive practices and formation, hermeneutical comprehension is embedded within the analogical-scientific reconstruction of the social and actual discourse of life for the sake of emancipation and transformative recognition of the religious outsiders. The epistemological framework from above is communicatively related to a social material reality from below. The human being as a political animal is also interpreted as an animal involved in reading written documents and in uncovering the relationship between knowledge and dominion. The biblical text is read to elicit what its subject matter intends: God’s newness in Christ for all. An analogical relation between the biblical subject matter and the cultural life world finds its validity in a sociocritical interpretation and in defiance of an ideology and the colonization of the cultural life world, through the discovery of the language of the silenced, the deviant, and the victim. A language of dissimilarity or difference must affirmatively interact with a language of analogical imagination. Narrative intentionality in the Bible converses and is rearticulated in a living way through a dialog with the marginalized in the extra-biblical cultural world. A postcolonial hermeneutic is characterized by five features. (1) It subverts traditional meaning by looking for appositional or protesting voices in the text and bringing marginal elements to the front; (2) it does not romanticize or idealize the poor; (3) it pays attention to the social structures and institutions generating victimhood; (4) it reads the sacred texts within an intercultural continuum embodying multiple perspectives, and (5) it deals with the question of language, ethnicity, culture, and religion within multilingual, multiracial, multicultural, and multireligious societies.45 In this light, a non-Christian theory of interpretation of sacred texts and religious classics that is more in tune with Asian worldviews can enrich Christian hermeneutics. A postcolonial hermeneutic discards “the Bible as a yardstick to judge the sacred texts of other religions” by reading the Bible and other sacred texts in mutual cross-fertilization.46 Thus a postcolonial interpretive strategy achieves a wider intertextuality by a juxtaposition that highlights the rich connections between the texts and oral narratives of many traditional cultures.47 How do postcolonialists understand the difference between the language of the Judeo-Christian narrative and the language of non- Christian religious classics? To what extent do they reconcile the difference and otherness of the Christian experience of the gospel and the non- Christian experience of ultimate reality? Can the Hindu-Buddhist theory of

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reincarnation be integrated into the Christian narrative of human life in a complementary way? The postcolonialists, in relativizing and placing the Christian narrative of Scripture at the same level as non-Christian religious texts, are heavily indebted to modern critical consciousness that subverts traditional meaning by dictating the textual world’s life world. Here, the problem of human postcolonial consciousness is taken and elevated outside the colonized world and privileged to exercise critique by totalizing all differences into postcolonial critical reason. Postcolonial elitist reason must learn from the analogical-discursive aspect of language, which remarkably shapes human consciousness in a historical, social, and public location. Otherwise, the freedom of God’s speech event is totalized into the pluralistic-relativistic metanarrative of postcolonial intertextuality. A postcolonial subject who aims to subvert the given meaning juxtaposes the sacred texts with intercultural continuum for embodiment of multiple perspectives. A local language, particular and unique religious experience, or social, religious practice of discourse and culture in its particular and different history and place is leveled down within a metanarrative of “multi-ism.” A postcolonial reason debunks social structure and institution in multicultural society generating the victimhood, as it totalizes a particular and different discourse and religious-cultural orientation for the sake of relativism of the multiple perspectivism. A postcolonial ethic of denouncing and its totalizing discourse of “multi-ism” tend to sidestep the fact that a concept of so-called postcolonial rationality is already conditioned, shaped, and inf luenced by a traditional meaning. Such meaning is given by religions and sacred classics, social sinful structure of victimhood, and a metanarrative ideology of “multi-ism.” In contrast, analogical-discursive strategy of interpretation gives priority to God’s Saying over spoken and written texts. It is certain that language in Hebrew thought—dabar (Ps 33:9)—understands that the Word of God is action and action is a “speaking” event. God, who is the Subject of divine speaking, speaks through marginalized life in the cultural and social sphere. God’s act of speaking upholds the living voice of the gospel in the ecclesial sphere as well as in the worldly and public sphere. It has a preferential ethical partisanship for those who are not capable of rationally developing communicative competence in the ideal speech situation and communicative argument, that is, those who are marginalized and buried in the rational society of the public sphere. Thus, a missiology of God’s word-event seeks criteria for the legitimation of validity claims in the communicative structure of a public theologia crucis.48 A theology of public theologia crucis in an analogicaldicursive perspective calls for a recognition of a particular, different, and localized narrative of the other and audaciously risks for a transformation of the self in light of God’s Saying through the other. Given this fact, an analogical-discursive hermeneutic strives for the subject matter of Christian narrative in the scripture and self-ref lectively engages the irregularity of God’s word-event that transpires provocatively in the ugly face of massa perditionis in our present day reality. When an

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analogical theory of interpretation converses with God’s word-event, it brings all of what is said in cultural documents, discursive formation, and political-religious institutions to the irregular side of God’s Saying. Thus it critically reexamines what is said in light of God’s Saying as what is left unsaid and buried in the life of voiceless others. In the sense of God’s Saying, analogical hermeneutics aim at uncovering the unsaid and marginalized discourse in the life of the other so that their narratives can be analogically reconstructed in the world of the cultural text. The signification of God’s Saying through the other in a social, public discursive location goes beyond the said and written documents and materials.49 God’s relational transcendence can be deepened by an analogicaldiscursive hermeneutic that touches upon the experiences of God’s Saying in the human f lesh.50 Here, analogical-discursive strategy of interpretation does not elevate a critical reason as a transcendental or “beyond” colonial place that presupposes an ideology of multiple perspectivism over against a different, localized, and particular discourse. Rather, it makes a critical reason self-critical and ref lective in a poignant and sober way. It does this by considering the priority of transcendental touch of God’s discursive action over and against the reified and colonized life world. This world is built on the interdependence of scientific, intellectual, and religious knowledge and institutionalized power. God’s word as missional event breaks into the worldly reality of lordless powers, challenging and renewing it. The church’s mission participates in mission of God’s speech event, promoting its solidarity with those who are alienated and voiceless in the public sphere. An analogical reframing of the saying over the said denotes and addresses the priority of God’s speech event that takes place in the cultural-religious sphere. Meaning is made contextual in light of God’s word-event by referring to other words and being situated within the multiple horizons of different language and the other’s world. When language is the language of activity and event, language fulfills its analogical-discursive medium by bearing witness to the dynamism of God’s Saying through the ugly face of God’s minority people. There is no such thing as a metanarrative or universal language into which all different languages and particular experiences of divine reality can be translated and communicated. Languages penetrate one another laterally, revealing meaning and expression through transhistoricity in an analogical-discursive configuration and revealing their fate under eschatological proviso. In doing so, language is signified transhistorically and transculturally as related to God’s mission of word-event which is the driving force in the project of interculturation and emancipation. Mission of Word Event in Interreligious Witness It is helpful to investigate an analogical model of Christian mission as it relates to emancipation and social-interreligious witness in a critical

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deliberation of the Word of God. Analogical hermeneutics engage in configuring God’s mission of word-event from a multicultural and interreligious perspective. What happens when the horizon shifts and we grapple with interpreting the Christian gospel as it relates to the life world of many religions and many cultures? The non-Western horizon places Christian beliefs within a swirl of surrounding religious world views. This reality may find a Western theology of mission or a Western interpretation of the gospel unsatisfactory if it requires their imposition on people in a different cultural context. The task of contextualization or inculturation ought not to be regarded as achieving a shallow syncretism. Rather, it implies a fusion of multiple horizons and narratives in a hermeneutical sense.51 This task constitutes an indispensable part of understanding the gospel anew in a different time and place. Inculturation, when dissociated from hermeneutical engagement with the Scripture, human religious experience, and non-Christian religious classics, tends toward a romanticization of cultural conservatism and the traditional, hierarchical system. Consequently, it deconstructs the prophetic dimension of the gospel. There has been growing interest among theologians in exploring the relationship between the gospel, culture, and religious pluralism. However, the question of the interaction of the gospel with other religions is often difficult to handle because evangelistic theologians are hesitant to mingle the sacred with the profane. However, what appears as a pure gospel, is, in some instances, conditioned and shaped by a western cultural context and hides a remnant of western cultural theological superiority. Asian postcolonial hermeneutic attempts to explore religious classics and the art of interpretation in a multiscriptural light by revealing their ideological coverings. Subsequently, they attempt to appropriate the meaning of religious classics that has shaped and inf luenced the spiritual life of ordinary people at the grassroots level.52 Insofar as God’s word event is examined and explored in an intercultural-hermeneutical perspective, the Word of God is the foundation of God’s self-interpretation as a missionary God in Trinitarian life and in historical-eschatological fellowship with the world. The mission of the triune God is defined in light of God’s self-revelation and interpretation in Jesus Christ in the presence of the Holy Spirit. God’s historical action in Jesus Christ broadens the horizons of God’s speech event through Israel and the Gentiles in the Hebrew Bible, making them more amenable to and interconnected with a Christian understanding of a mission of God’s extraordinary communication in a multiscriptural context. In today’s context, much ref lection has been done on the theological claims of Christian uniqueness in the face of other religions and spiritualities in the public sphere. This ref lection has resulted in an insistence that the church/world dichotomy be rejected. The church should learn from the world of people of other faiths and cultures. A term like “the theology of religions” makes a universal demand to include and totalize all religions and ideologies into the mystery of God as “the Great Integrator.”

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Such a pluralistic strategy, rejecting claims for a specific, particular, context-bound way, does not recognize the specificity and uniqueness of the Trinitarian mission of God’s narrative in different times and places. In dealing with the reality of religious pluralism, it is important to bear in mind that all the great world religions were born and f lourished in Asia. A theologian of religions like John Hick argues for a Copernican revolution in theology concerning the place of Christianity among world religions. Theocentrism relativizes the place of Jesus Christ. God’s mystery supersedes Christ’s mission for God’s reign. However, it would be naïve, even presumptuous to assume that a theology of religions is privileged to reduce and totalize all differences of religious languages into one blash thing, that is, the sameness of the Great Integrator for the sake of sheer relativism. Such a pluralist train of thought is likely to result in the loss of one’s own religious identity and uniqueness. Here the identity of the God of Israel in promissio and missio is dethroned and eliminated for the sake of the totalizing principle of God Integrator. As for the cosmotheandric metaphysics, Panikkar endorses diatopical hermeneutics53 that open up a horizon of encounter; this is the basis for his vision of intrareligious dialog. “Diatopical hermeneutics stands for the thematic consideration of understanding the other without assuming that the other has the same basic self-understanding and understanding as I have.”54 According to Panikkar, a Christian cannot fully understand Hinduism if he/she does not convert to Hinduism, and conversely a Hindu cannot fully understand Christianity if he/she does not convert to Christianity.55 A diatopical hermeneutic is the locus where such intrareligious dialog takes place for a second conversion. His diatopical hermeneutic is not interested in understanding dialog through language, but in producing a common language to allow complementarity among religions and to impose a second conversion. Panikkar’s metaphor of a river is amplified to the point of calling for a pluralistic plunge into the river Ganges. In fact, the rivers of the earth do not meet each other, not even in the ocean, nor do they need to meet in order to be truly life-giving rivers. But where do they meet? In the skies, that is, in heaven.56 For Panikkar, the Ganges as the mother river is a symbol for recognizing the otherness of the other religions and thus totalizing all other religions and traditions in Asia, Africa, and Oceania. Panikkar’s openness to the divine (the meeting of all religions in heaven) is absolved and reversed into the river Ganges that totalizes all different rivers into itself. Aware of the intolerant tendency of Hindu theology, Aloysius Pieris maintains that the Hindu approach is inclined to neutralize other religions by absorbing their particular uniqueness into the Hindu theological perspective. Accepting all religions as true and equally valid ways of salvation, the Hindu theology of religions appears to be intolerant only of the particularity of other religions.57 Pieris’ approach to a Buddhist-Christian encounter proposes that the two religions are incomplete in that they don’t fully articulate the source

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of ultimate liberation, thus they are complementary and mutually corrective of each other.58 He sharply criticizes limitations in the western theory of fulfillment, while recognizing its contribution to interreligious encounter: the fulfillment theory regards other religions as only a preparatory way to the Christian religion, which is the absolute religion. However, Christ is a greater reality than the church, so the church and the Scriptures do not exhaust revelation and salvation. Nevertheless, the church and the Scriptures are normative guides and sacramental pointers to the God who is revealed and saves in Christ.59 In promoting an Asian theology of spirituality and liberation, Pieris describes the Asian context as a blend of profound religiousness and overwhelming poverty. The poverty and religiousness are taken as bi-dimensional, retaining both a psychological and a sociological aspect. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi’s option for poverty was both a religious choice and a political strategy of liberation from mammonic powers and oppressive systems.60 From this perspective, Pieris challenges the thesis of Van Leeuwen, which claims that the scientific and industrial revolution with its modern and secular culture as a product of Western Christianity must be welcomed and carried to the East. Then the traditional religious values of Asia could break down. The implication appears to be that the theology and cultural ideology of the West must eradicate the Asian sense of poverty and religiousness.61 Paradoxically, such an imperialist tendency reappears in a different form in the postcolonial-feminist deconstruction of the Asian sense of poverty and religiousness in the name of the omnipotent place of postcolonial rationality and western critical reason as if they exist outside the reified, mammonized, and globalized life world. According to Pieris, the Asian church is caught between classic European theology and Latin American liberation theology. Compared to the classic European theology, a liberative concern that uses sociocritical analysis of the public sphere to change the world of injustice is important in Pieris’ rendering of the primacy of spirituality (praxis) over theory. Spirituality is a radical involvement with the poor and the oppressed that creates theology. Here, Pieris’ appreciation of transformative spirituality has a parallel with Gutiérrez’s concept of liberative spirituality.62 Pieris states further that the theology of the cross implies a process punctuated by radical contradictions, violent transformations, and deathresurrection experiences, all scripturally founded in the transcendence of the crucified God.63 Pieris’ participatory and transformative spirituality is intent on bringing about the kingdom of God and calls for a dynamic participation and commitment in the struggle for the full humanity of the poor. This requires a prophetic praxis of discipleship following in the footsteps of Christ. Thus, voluntary poverty includes a political strategy against the powers and principalities serving mammon. God’s gratuitous gift of the kingdom is not identified with any social order on earth. Nevertheless, Pieris argues that liberation theology lacks a perceptive understanding of the religious ethos of the East, sidestepping the integration

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of social liberation with the spiritual liberation of the individual in an Asian context. For the church to be truly spiritual as well as liberative, it must be fully baptized in the waters of Asian poverty and religion.64 Hermeneutically speaking, Pieris’ core-to-core dialog with Buddhism retrieves the liberative experience that is common to the core of any religion. In Buddhism this core experience is conceptualized as gnosis (liberative knowledge) while in Christianity it is agape (redemptive love). Although each core experience is not adequate as the sole medium for experiencing or expressing human intimate moments with the Ultimate Source of Liberation, each is salvific. In this light, Pieris calls for communicatio in sacris to share the liberative core of a religion with people of other faiths. The primordial experience (liberation), the collective memory of that experience (tradition), and the interpretation of it (scriptural exegesis) deserve attention. If one enters into communicatio sacris, one must be ready to transcend one’s own religious tradition, practices, beliefs, and so on. Insofar as the core experience (the liberative nucleus) of a religion is preserved and protected in the collective and traditional memory as well as in the act of interpretation, a core-to-core dialog may be able to sidestep the role of dominion in the collective tradition in which a given religion has served the powerful of a society. If a core-to-core dialogue is to be spiritually prophetic in a genuine sense, it must explore the language and discourse of those who are most marginally connected religiously and culturally to the core experience of the religion. For instance, if the core experience of the Christian religion is originated in the experience of Exodus and the death-resurrection of Jesus Christ, how and to what extent does a committed Christian transcend this core-experience for the sake of communicatio in sacris with Buddhism? Is this Christian experience, to some extent, a deja vu experience in a Christian passage through the Buddhists’ collective memory, as Pieris speculates?65 Insofar as difference is not recognized as different in interreligious encounter, a gnostic agape is identified with an agapeic gnosis. That being the case, would the Christian notion of salvation be equated with the Buddhist notion of enlightenment? The subject matter of the Christian gospel is more than a human spiritual experience; transcending, correcting, renewing, and expanding it through the divine speech event through the church as well as the world. Pieris seems to be convinced of the work of the Holy Spirit, by perceiving a communicatio in sacris as an epiclesis. Thus, he ensures a breakthrough in the language barrier between Christians and Buddhists66 that will transcend religious tradition and language. From a Christian perspective, however, the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of communication awakens Christians to what God has done in Christ for all, instead of conveying and making the Buddhist core experience of enlightenment a part of Christian experience. The Spirit is connected with the activity of God’s word-event in the ecclesial and extra-ecclesial sphere. The Spirit blows where it chooses

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( John 3:8), but the Spirit does not work at random, instead the Spirit will testify on Christ’s behalf ( John 15:26). Drawing upon a spirituality of gnosis and love, Pieris is not convinced that a study of written texts should be undertaken as part of an interreligious exchange. His recommendation is only humble discipleship under a competent monk. Unfortunately, Pieris’ dialogical praxis of communicatio in sacris contends that Christians plunge into the Jordan of Buddhist spirituality in the presence and guidance of an authoritative and competent monk.67 If Pieris argues that Buddhism and Christianity are equally valid and salvific, why does he require a Christian conversion under a Buddhist monk? Does it mean that Buddhist wisdom, like Hinduism, pursues the way of intolerant tolerance, converting Christians to Buddhism? To promote a pluralist theology of religions, Paul Knitter moves beyond both the conservative exclusivist approach and the liberal inclusivist approach. He calls for a new paradigm of the pluralist position. For Knitter, this means “a move away from the insistence on the superiority or finality of Christ and Christianity towards recognition of the independent validity of other ways. Such a move came to be described by the participants in our project as the crossing of a theological Rubicon.”68 However, the metaphor of crossing a theological Rubicon (reminiscent of Caesar’s crossing of the same river in 49 BCE) is vulnerable to a colonialistic tendency that levels and totalizes the Other, the difference, and the uniqueness into its own grand narrative of sameness. Distancing itself from a pluralist-totalizing theology of religions, a hermeneutical concept of mission of word-event in light of God’s act of speaking accentuates the continuity between the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Bible by integrating the particularity and universality of God’s word-event through Israel, God’s universal covenant with Gentiles, and Jesus Christ. Having considered this, a missiology of word-event calls for an analogical art of interpretation that deals with God’s word in the intratextual narrative as well as in the extra-biblical realm. A multiscriptural theory of interpretation is analogically taken up and developed in light of the dynamic irregularity of God’s word-event. A mission of God’s narrative in an analogical and discursive manner is a critical-constructive ref lection on the irregularity of God’s word-event in view of the world of religious pluralism and in engagement with people of other faiths. According to Paul’s theology of Israel, Israel could testify to the eschatological proviso in the self of God, resisting the Christian pathos of the finality of time. It is important to take seriously the Jewish “No” and extend this acceptance to the “No” of atheistic humanism and other religious truth claims toward the Christian claim of exclusiveness and finality. Every serious atheist, as well as the spiritually mature of other faiths, may have a biblical justification in the Jewish “No” to the ecclesialeschatological triumphalism of Christianity. God’s mystery in freedom, which is unsearchable and inscrutable, becomes a basis for understanding God’s way toward people outside the

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walls of Christianity. In our general climate of religious tolerance and indifference, God speaks to us through symbolic figures like Melchizedek or Cyrus, a pagan king, on behalf of righteousness, universal peace, and emancipation. God changes Balaam’s intended curse by speaking through a donkey. From the mouth of Balaam, God’s speech is not to be neglected, regardless of its sinister message (Num 22:22–35). Because of this biblical view of God’s word-event and religious outsiderswhich says that God restores what God speaks to people in non-Christian religions—it is important to define religious pluralism more positively in terms of God’s act of speech in freedom and mystery undertaken through Christ’s reconciliation with the world. Nonbiblical religions or languages may serve as metaphors or parables in a hermeneutical sense and thus they analogically give an account of the irregularity of the mission of God’s narrative. The world of nature is also a locus from where God’s speech begins. Human language may correspond to God’s speech because God comes to us as language. All human words have a hermeneutical character, serving as a mundane analogy to God’s transformative mission. An emphasis on social location makes explicit meaning making and interpretation an act of creating critical distance at a social cultural level because it analyzes the interconnection of knowledge and power from the standpoint of the marginalized and the dissimilar. This emphasis does not replace hermeneutics with a sociocritical method or genealogy (Michel Foucault). Rather, it refurbishes a sociocritical dimension of an analogical-discursive hermeneutic.69 An analogical deliberation of the dynamic quality of God’s word-event integrates the diachronic-historical art of interpretation with the synchronic-social analysis. If we are to follow the line of God’s word event in a post-foundational (post-ecclesial) and irregular manner, going in every way and all directions, our openness must be characterized by a humble attitude, spiritual poverty, and willingness to audaciously risk our position. Then we can be transformed to adopt God’s mission of word event that occurs in the lives of people in a world of religious pluralism in mystery and freedom. The strange, unexpected, and dynamic way of the irregularity of God’s act of speech, stemming from a multiscriptural life world and dissimilar discourse on the margins, encourages us to be radically open to the wisdom of the world religions. This position leads to a transformative mission of acknowledging pluralism in an unrelativistic and nontotalizing sense. In this regard, a Christian project of missiology of God’s narrative in an intercultural context upholds a Christian engagement with the subject matter of God’s word-event through the scriptures as well as through the life world of religious outsiders. The church and the world are engaged with each other in an on-going way in light of God’s activity of Saying and God’s coming in eschatological actualization here and now. Seen in light of God’s word-event, Christian mission takes a specifically analogical character and discursive contour. If God is by nature missional through creation, redemption, and consummation, then, as we encounter

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a multiscriptural life horizon, a Christian theology of mission must be grounded in rational and critical wrestling with the mystery of God in love, promise, and freedom. To the degree that a Christian theology of mission engages in the public realm, where God works in a mysterious way—particularly through the ugly face of those marginalized, victimized, and voiceless—theologia crucis, in an ethical contour, retains a central place in the mission of God’s word event in a multicultural society. The ugly face of minjung can be seen in the face of the crucified Jesus, the suffering servant of God in whom no stately form or beauty (Isa 53:2) is to be known. Christian theology of mission is archetypal, analogical, and discursive. It moves from an intratextual and multiscriptural perspective when it comes to God’s involvement with the world. An ecclesial ref lection of biblical narrative of God’s Word (intratextuality) does not necessarily mean contradicting the irregularity of God’s speaking in an extra-biblical and multiscriptural sphere. Religious texts and cultural narratives in a non-Western life world come into dialog with the Christian narrative and are fused: widening and enriching each horizon by interpretating God’s word-event through the Scripture, the church, and the cultural-religious life of religious outsiders. God’s Mission as Narrative and Non-Christian Religious Scriptures Intercultural dialog is an indispensable part of a theology of God’s mission as narrative as it converses with people’s religious experience and the religious classics of other faiths. Its prophetic dimension can be found when publicly relevant inculturation of the gospel occurs through discernment, recognition, and an interpretative appropriation of the wisdom and spirituality of other faiths for people in a different time and place. When the church engages in dialog with people of other cultures and faiths, mission and evangelization assume the form of witnessing to God’s gracious embrace of the world and justice for human life in terms of God’s justification and reconciliation in Jesus Christ. An attempt to explore the implication of God’s word-mission for prophetic dialog with the East Asian life setting entails a hermeneutic of audacity in matters pertaining to the irregularity of God’s act of speaking to the church through religious outsiders. In constructing Christian Theology in an Asian and postcolonial contour,70 Asian theologians endeavor to propose a character of Christian theology from an Asian perspective. An Asian perspective entails distinctive difference, contextuality, prophetic mandate, and an ecumenical, global orientation. In this light Asian Christian theology attempts to articulate the Asian people’s desire to search for the transcendental aspects of life involving the mystery of God.

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Constructing an Asian Christian theology involves the distinctive uniqueness of the Asian art of interpretation that reads the subject matter of Christian Scripture in engagement with Asian religious classics. Intratextuality in the world of the scriptures encounters the extra-biblical words of God as coming from the life spectrum of the poor and multireligious communities. Specifically, Asian Christian theology, whether evangelical or contextual, aims to articulate such interpretation uniquely, distinctively and with interculturality. Otherwise, the Asian theological imagination remains captive: reiterating the western theological interpretation and method (whether it be evangelical or liberal), albeit under the banner of inculturation, liberation, or cross-cultural hermeneutics. An intercultural construction of God’s Word as missional event calls for Asian hermeneutics to be involved in an experience of encounter and conf luence between the biblical narrative and Asian religious cultural narratives. Asian experience is often a good proxy for undergirding the Asian sense of constructing and practicing theology rooted in an Asian cultural life situation in partisanship with those who are on the underside of cultural universal history. However, oftentimes this experience can also be an impediment to the subject matter of Christian narrative, which is beyond human linguistic or religious conceptualization. Christian theology in Asia is neither an indiscretion nor a prowess; rather it is an audacious endeavor among Asian Christians and theologians to be responsible for theological subject matter while respecting the multicultural reality of religious pluralism and socio-political reality of massa perditionis (ochlos—minjung or dalit). Here, a different interpretation is conceived of as a better interpretation because interpretation is an on-going engagement with the subject matter of the text that leads to projecting a social-existential emancipation into the cultural public sphere. In light of the Word of God and the people’s religious-political experience, Christian theology in Asia has two foci: inculturation for evangelization and postcolonial emancipation for social justice. Ahn Byung-mu’s sociobiographical concept of Jesus and minjung can be illustrated as the classic text of minjung theology and can be seen as an example of a hermeneutic of suspicion and solidarity for missio Dei. Ahn’s lifelong concern with the theory of interpretation is grounded in his expertise of a redaction criticism that deciphers Jesus’ sociobiographical solidarity with ochlosminjung. This Christology in a minjung perspective profoundly challenges western dogmatic concept of Christology in an individualistic sense. However, Ahn’s hermeneutic mainly based on redaction criticism is vulnerable to an anti-Jewish legacy of western academic biblical study. On the other hand, it is prejudiced for western scholars to argue that minjung theology in Korea simply assimilated Marxist insights.71 In an attempt to overcome the limitations of minjung theology, an Asian irregular theology is emerging in North America. This irregular theology learns critically from first generation minjung theology by challenging its supercessionism and deepening a hermeneutical theology of God’s word-event in an

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analogical-discursive reframing. Furthermore it addresses the complexities of religious cultural life and the concerns of those whose marginalization is rooted in traditional culture.72 Theologians in India under the inf luence of a Christian-Hindu relationship introduce a path between Christianity and Hinduism in pursuit of the inexhaustibility of the Ultimate Reality or Mystery. God is the Ultimate Mystery of the world, inspiring different religions to explore the Ultimate Mystery. Driven by the unsurpassable Mystery of God, Indian Catholic theology attempts “to cope with the vibrant religions with their ancient wisdom expressed in the lived spirituality of the Indian mass.” 73 The originality of Indian Catholic theology is based on an understanding that Jesus Christ is the only medium of salvation. Therefore, its articulation of mission comes from this understanding. Developing perspectives on mission and inculturation in an Asian context, Vietnamese-Catholic theologian, Peter C. Phan affirms an inclusivist position by articulating God’s universal salvific will and the necessary mediatory place of Jesus Christ. Given this position, he proposes scripture and tradition as normative resources by confessing Jesus Christ as the incarnated Word of God and redeemer. In contrast to historical-critical biblical interpretation, Phan argues that Asian theologians bring to the fore a multipronged hermeneutic based on the multicultural and multireligious context of Asia. Using the masses of the poor, the vitality of diverse religions, and the richness of many cultures as interpretive lenses or angles in reading the Bible, Asian theologians retrieve the hermeneutical tradition of the Eastern churches, multicultural, and multifaith hermeneutics, and ordinary people-based hermeneutics.74 Asian theologians committed to interreligious and multiscriptural exchange tend to assume that Christian identity is defined in terms of the negation of others or exclusivism. Nevertheless, we should not belittle a biblical tendency toward the universalism of God’s narrative. Considering the universal train of biblical thought, we cannot simply state that the Upanishads is a book of wholeness, embracing all different things, while the Bible is a book of exclusivism.75 A serious exegetical engagement with the subject matter of the Bible must be undertaken as Asian theologians develop their Asian theory of interpretation in conjunction with reading Asian religious classics. For a creative Asian cross-textual theory of interpretation, Asian theologians in China and Hong Kong attempt to make a concerted effort to map a postcolonial hermeneutic of hybridity in light of a cross-textually fused reading of Christian scripture and “the potential divine inspirational nature of other [religious] scriptures.”76 A concept of cross-textual hermeneutics is developed and proposed in the midst of the multiscriptural tradition of Asia. Driven by postcolonial research and reconfiguration, two different readings are proposed: a sociopolitical (emancipation-oriented) reading and a cross-textual Biblical interpretation (inculturation-oriented). This interpretative theory of inter

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(or intra)-scriptural hybridity and coalescence attempts to actualize an encounter of two narratives or life horizons between Christian scripture and Asian religious scriptures (or sutras). In this process, the Trinitarian mission of word event can be interpreted in a new and different way, reconciling the Asian religious texts with the biblical text and constructing a broader fused framework of meaning through the appropriation and accommodation of different religious perspectives.77 Is the theological subject matter dependent on the reader’s existential projection or cross-cultural life setting? Or does the theological subject matter of God’s word-event remain free to speak to Asian Christians through religious outsiders and the multiscriptural horizon? The Reformation principle of sola scriptura points to the viva vox Dei, namely the subject matter of Christ’s gospel (norma Normans), which is higher than the written scriptural or confessional writings (norma normata). The Reformation hermeneutics of God’s word-event must be valued, because it is not merely captive to the absolute and exclusive validity of the Scripture itself, as Asian theologians generally speculate.78 Subsequently, Reformation hermeneutics in an Asian context may gain prominence by being explored and developed further in light of the dynamic quality of God’s act of speech stemming from non-Christian scriptures. In examining a cross-cultural interpretation that employs the fusion or conf luence of multiple narratives in a cross-scriptural context, it is important to mention such Asian scholars as Samartha, Pieris, and SoaresPrahbhu, C. S. Song, Kim Kyung-Jae, and Arachie Lee who converse with such western scholars as Hans G-Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and David Tracy. Gadamer’s theory of the fusion of horizons and history of effect, Tracy’s analogical imagination (based on hermeneutical retrieval of tradition and critical distanciation), and Ricoeur’s theory of time and narrative for the reconfiguration of life, contribute to facilitate an Asian cross-textual theory of interpretation that moves toward the postcolonial category of hybridity and cultural emancipation. In this light, a debate of the mission of God’s narrative in an Asian context assumes an interpretive, analogical, and cross-textual reframing and orientation. Furthermore, Deridda’s strategy of deconstruction of the text plays an important role in constructing a postcolonial hermeneutic of hybridity to overcome western metaphysics of presence. However, it seems important for us to see that textuality (Schriftlickeit) in its fashion of a hermeneutic of suspicion, to which Ricoeur, Tracy, and to some extent Derrida are committed, is not adequate to decode the powerknowledge interplay structured in the discourse of social location. A Hermeneutic of Word Event and Strategy of Deconstruction An irregular-transversal strategy of interpretation in an analogical-discursive style disturbs the metaphysics of presence and totalization, which posits an

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identity or sameness of being and meaning as a grounding principle. The western metaphysics of totalization regards equivocity as a deviation to be overcome in light of “immanentalist” presence of the truth. Against this trend, an irregular theory of interpretation assumes a middle way in terms of a dialectical interplay between positive appropriation and critical distanciation. It does not presuppose a concept of transcendental place of sublation of Super Ego rather it points in a direction of fusing an encounter of horizon of discourse localized in-similiarity-in-difference for the sake of mutual recognition and transformation. This act of interpretation is embedded within social practices, because a text is not autonomous from the social location regarding both the time of the text and its later interpretation. It is naive to presuppose a textual claim for universal applicability to multiple perspectivism or in light of arche writing.79 Derrida’s concept of noncoincidence différance has no reason at all to reject God’s speech event as the notion representing a resource of Greek conceptuality of logocentrism, phonocentrism, or ontotheology. God in the biblical context is the One who speaks through the Scripture as well as in the worldly affairs while transcending the textual world. A différance may be found in the spoken word. According to Derrida, uncovering an authencity of the gospel, namely evangelical message is “to free it from its metaphysico-philosophical super ego.” Here, deconstruction can be a useful technique to criticize a whole theological institution which has dissimulated an authentic Christian message. Faith in this regard is lived in a venturous, dangerous, and provocative, free way.80 Is the promise of différance appropriate as the condition for authenticating viva vox evangelii? If God presents God’s self through word-event, to what extent does the promise of différance simulate this God of Speaking in Judeo-Chrisrtian tradition? In a process of thing itself coming-intolanguage, a difference, discontinuity, and undecidability of the truth in Derrida’s project of deconstruction is instituted and integrated into a dialectical-analogical understanding of mutual speech event81 rather than being excluded and discarded. Thus, an irregular hermeneutic of God’ Saying does not eliminate the promise of différance, but discusses it in an analogical-discursive open process in view of linguistic similarity-in-difference of dissimilar discourse. God’s Saying transcends the world and the language appropriate to it, while being relational and present through the Scripture, language, and the world in light of the Holy Spirit. It is an unqualified argument when Derrida, drawing upon the promise of difference, denounces the hermeneutical aspect of word-event as logocentrism without reservation. In Judeo-Christian tradition, it is certain that Dabar (God’s Saying) transcends the Logos (God’s said) while operating in relation to it. When ignoring this transcental-presentative side of God’s speech event, a project of deconstruction would amount to an atheism or nihilistic relativism only for the sake of deconstruction and différance. Here, an unnecessary and unfortunate charge would transpire that différance is an arche-syntheses as a master word that gathers every particular and different into one word.82

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A hermeneutical theology of word-event in an analogical-discursive configuration takes issue with the iconoclastic role of a sociocritical interpretation concerning both Asian religious scriptures and the Bible. Rather, the irregular theology of word mission runs for the sake of recognition and transformation in such an encounter between the biblical narrative and extra-biblical life world. History as effect is juxtaposed with the social location when it comes to shaping and conditioning the writers of the texts and the people in the narratives of the texts. A universal dimension of hermeneutics and its linguistic discourse are sharpened and expanded in an encounter with a sociocritical theory of life world and emancipation. This expansion happens by way of an analysis of the interplay between power and knowledge that legitimizes politicalreligious domination and institutionalization. The result of this analysis accentuates the effect of the social-economic factor on the social existential intentionality in understanding the text. Here, language has the function of appropriating the social material reality by unmasking an historical reality of political dominion and institutionalized power imposed on those below from above. Critiquing the ideology and deciphering competing interests within the world of the text and society does not undermine the place of the intellectual, artistic, or idealistic spheres inf luencing social material life. In light of the dynamism of word-event, a hermeneutical missiology of God’s mission in an Asian context brings the biblical narrative into living dialog with the extra-ecclesial irregularity of God’s speech through discourse of marginalized and silenced in the Asian religious world. Given the priority of God’s saying over the world of the said text, the Asian theological imagination of divine word-event brings all of the said to the saying. Furthermore, it critically reexamines the said in light of the saying that is associated with the religious outsiders and their discourse in the public sphere. Subsequently, this interpretative engagement deciphers and reconfigures the unsaid by the text’s silenced and voiceless in the narratives. The task implies a project of emancipation by analogically reconstructing the discourse in dissimilarity and difference of those who are burdened on the downside of the world. Similarity of discourse must be sharpened and brought up into relationship with the dissimilar discourse of those who are suppressed. Meaning in a multiscriptural exchange is always contextual, transversal, ever-changing, and open ended. Human experience cannot be merely reduced to metalanguage or metanarrative when attempting to describe the experience of divine reality in a multiscriptural context. Experience can be a reading of meaning, an exegesis, or a hermeneutic.83 There is no such thing as a metanarrative or language into which all different languages and particular experiences with divine reality can be translated and communicated into a multiscriptural hybridity. Meaning is transversal, localized, and unique. A deconstructive approach to binary opposition between the discourse and the text is overt in the postcolonial-feminist strategy against

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essentializing of any substantial concept. It does not necessarily reject the priority of God’s speech event, even before human language and text. According to Derrida, what marks off the thought of différance from the discourse of negative theology becomes possible in speaking of the promise. We cannot keep any metalinguistic distance in regard to the promise.84 A negative theology is the movement toward hyperessentiality, beyond Being, thus an ontotheological reappropriation remains possible in this framework of via negativa.85 Derrida’s position stands in relation to a discourse that positions itself as a nonplace, namely “beyond being.” Here Derrida deals with a question of how to avoid speaking of the negative theology. The speaking subject in Derrida’s sense can be articulated in a way that “letting it be dictated to me by I do not know what unconscious order.”86 The figure of the unconscious order dictates to Derrida the promise to speak on the avoidance of speaking as denegation. This denegation is desistance, which stands away from negative theology, while both constituting and deconstituting the topic of negative theology. Insofar as discourse on the promise is already a promise, it is in the promise. A speaking of that which inscribes us by its trace in language or before language does not need to contradict an analogical-discursive style of expressing the meaning of the promise in light of similarity-indifference in irregular and transversal sense. If the promise has seized the I, which promises to speak to the other, this perspective should come into hermeneutical circle of the promise as such and the I rather than being threshold to via negativa. For Derrida, the promise, of which I speaks, always escapes the demand of presence. From here a question arises: “how to avoid speaking” in Deridda’s sense. However, such question must be found in the physical face of the other standing in God’s trace rather than human desire to defer. Derida contends that an interpretive mode of différance or X (text, writing, the trace, différance, the hymen, the supplement, the pharmakon, the parergon, etc.) remains in a negative dialectic (reminiscent of a Buddhist logic of nonduality in a nonsubstantial sense). According to the logic of X, X is neither this nor that, neither positive nor negative, etc. without proposing any dialectic of a third moment (sublation).87 Derrida’s logic of X has little to do with early Wittegenstein’s position in the Tractatus: The inexpressible, indeed, exists. It shows itself: Concerning that about which one cannot speak, one must remain silent.88 Given this fact, Derrida further argues that a speaking of God is begun under this name, while it becomes “the hyperbolic effect of that negativity or all negativity that is consistent in its discourse.”89 Here, God would be the truth of all negativity in the sense of infinitely productive in Hegel’s sense. A proof of God is undertaken by God’s effects, to be precise, a proof of what one calls God, or of the name of God.90 That being the case, why shouldn’t Derrida take into account God’s name event or self-revelation in historical attributes through the physical face of the other in Jesus Christ?

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An irregular-transversal hermeneutic of God’s Saying follows the epistelmological principle that God is known through God’s action in historical attributes, emphasizing Jesus’ sociobiographical solidarity with ochlos-minjung. Jesus’ parable of the truth of the kingdom of God is enacted in his appropriation of dissimilar and marginalized discourse of the other. Discourse and written documents must be investigated and fused into an encounter of horizon in light of God’s speech event in intratextual sphere and extra-biblical one. God as the Subject of speaking transcends ontotheological encapsulation of a “polemical-transversal” dimension of viva vox Dei, while becoming basis for ethical responsibility in the public sphere. The Word of God does not imply any special and supernatural Word, little to with human daily discourse, but simply the finally valid Word in a true and proper sense. The Word discloses understanding in the act of discourse or as a verbal event. So, the theological hermeneutic is defined as the theory of God’s word-event. Insofar as the word-event unlocks human understanding, the basic structure of the Word is not a statement in the sense of information or written text. Rather it is the message in the sense of conversation, promise, and communication, which discloses human existence with the other. The objectifying statement has a derivative mode of understanding and language. The true nature of the word and language is the communication of existence, and the word that opens up existence is the promise. In this light, the true nature of word and language in general can be fulfilled in the gospel as the promissio Dei—the living voice of God in Jesus Christ. Given this fact, it is important to integrate the transmission of the Word of God as the history of effects in light of the word-event that takes place in the universality of the gospel ontologically and linguistically relevant for all. Therefore, it is essential to transcend a deconstructive strategy of interpretation in terms of the word-event in the concept of God’s act of speech. This act of speech considers the process and transmission of tradition that is grounded in God’s liberating act of Exodus, sanctifying act in Torah, and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In this light it also considers narrative of emancipation and compassion in other religious classics and discourses. The Word of God is interpreted as a history of effect extending linguistically Jesus’ missional discourse about the kingdom of God, while appearing to be the truth of word and language in the event of daily communication and promise. The true meaning of language as the communication that unlocks existence makes authentic existence possible.91 God’s pro-missio is a driving force for God’s act of evangelization and mission to the world. A speaking about God means speaking about God’s all-determining reality for the world. Here the revelatory authority of the gospel is grounded in God as the Subject of speaking rather than rationally proven.92 Attached to the rational verification of the revelation, a theology of prolepsis shows a paucity of considering a linguistic-discursive character of analogy as a

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language event in connection to God who is the infinite horizon of alldetermining reality. In hermeneutical perspective, an irregular theology refines and develops an analogy of similarity-in-difference in transversaldiscursive sense in light of theology of God’s word-event. It attempts to overcome the limitation of a theology of prolepsis that integrates the Word of God into the metaphysical totalizing framework of the universal history. An irregular theology begins with God’s particular-transversal history in Israel and in the gospel of Jesus Christ which is analogous talk about God as all-determining reality.93 Thus, the critical function of an irregular hermeneutic can be found in a theological discourse of parrh ēsia. A discourse of parrhēsia approaches God’s word-event by returning to the dissimilarity of religious others who stand in the prophetic irregularity of God’s narrative. It belongs to an essential dimension of Sprachlichkeit that is structured in Asian theological hermeneutics. In reframing a missiology of God’s word-event, a theological discourse of parrh ēsia is fundamental as a transversal-subversive praxis for God’s sake and for God’s massa perditionis à la recherche de temps perdu that follows the trace of God’s freedom and transcendence in the past and in our present. Within the interconnection of multiple religious texts, priority is given to God’s act of speaking regarding the textual world and the actual life situation. God’s act of speech implies unity between word and effect: Word as action and action as “speaking” action. An Asian theology of the irregularity of God’s saying strives to hermeneutically retrieve the subject matter of viva vox evangelii for God’s mission of word-event; thus it is self-ref lectively moving toward the pro-missio of God’s Word pertaining to God’s minority people. An irregular analogical imagination of God’s word-event remains a theology of God’s saying in view of the said and the unsaid in the interpretation of the biblical narrative in dialog with extrabiblical narratives.94 In such a theological deliberation on the Word of God, the hermeneutical circle takes place between God’s act of speech, human socialexistential interpretation of the multiple scriptures, and the life horizon of the texts. In pursuit of the mystery and freedom of God’s act of speaking through the Bible and the life world of religious outsiders, the fusion or interconnection of multiple horizons is constantly driven by an interest in emancipation and transformative recognition of the other. This quest is a hermeneutical endeavor to reframe a theology of the mission of word-event in the form of an analogical-discursive imagination.

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CH A P T E R

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Hermeneutic of God’s Narrative and Confucian Theory of Interpretation

We have discussed God’s narrative in relation to cultural world. In dealing with analogical reframing of Jesus’ narrative of parable about the truth of the kingdom of God, we have developed analogical-discursive theory of interpretation in light of the word-event. Asian project of emancipation and inculturation was sought with ethical configuration and commitment. This perspective facilitates us to better discuss interreligious exchange along with engagement with the narrative of non-Christian scriptures. An intercultural hermeneutic on God’s narrative challenges a postmodern strategy of deconstruction. This chapter further investigates an analogical hermeneutic of God’s narrative in dialog with Confucian theory of interpretation. An example for intercultural theory of interpretation will be made by a cross-cultural study of analogical language by comparing the Greek tradition (Plato and Aristotle) with neo-Confucian tradition (Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming). For the intercultural exchange, an aesthetictransforming dimension of God’s narrative will be discussed in view of a poetic imagination as seen in Bonhoeffer, a Buddhist poem of compassion, and a Taoist-Confucian poem of aesthetic utopia. Confucianism and Modernization in Debate Asian analogical hermeneutics of God’s narrative in an irregular and discursive configuration takes into account and refurbishes the indigenously inspired Asian theory of interpretation with regards to the Confucian investigation of external things and the extension of knowledge (drawing upon Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming). The Confucian program of interpretation is connected to apprehending the principle in external things. Scholars argue about the legacy of Confucianism when speaking about a hierarchical worldview and modernity. From the Asian feminist side, neo-Confucianism is accused of being the third member of the “unholy

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trinity” along with patriarchy and capitalism. Together these three concepts have worked to oppress women. As she analyzes business ethics in the economic development of Asia, Kang Nam Soon advocates for “a hybrid identity for theological construction in Asia” in terms of a postcolonial deconstruction of fixed, essentialized Asianess. She denounces the arguments of Asian theologians’ such as Pieris and Song for Asian culturalism that say that poverty is trapped in Asian’s essentialized identity.1 Does a critical study of Asian religious classics claim that they romanticize or essentialize Asian culturalism? A diacronic-syncronic study of culture in an analogical and discursive style reveals the postcolonial-feminist bias toward transcendental rationality. Does neo-Confucianism has a selective affinity for a Capitalist ethos? Does a Capitalist ethos uphold a culture of patriarchy? In Asia, neo-Confucianism is particularly appreciated as the characteristic feature for explaining an Asian way of modernization.2 Regarding this evaluation, Kwok argues that “if Calvinistic ethics served as the religious backdrop for the rise of capitalism,” according to Max Weber, today’s globalization is promoted by the Christian Right, made of religious fundamentalists and evangelicals of various stripes.3 Kwok affirms that there is a selective affinity between religious fundamentalists (and evangelicals) and social political Darwinism. She further argues that if Weber dismissed Chinese religion as stagnant and lacking progress in his sociological study, Asian scholars today point to the fact that Confucianism provides the religious motivation for economic growth equivalent to that promoted by Calvinism in the West.4 Confucianism makes a critical contribution to world civilization by offering an alternative model of modernization. The Western culture of modernity is outlined in China by Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy that promote industrialization and modernization in China, Japan, and South Korea. Western scientism and individual democracy are under skepticism by Confucian pundits because of their destructive and egotistical consequences. The modern consequences of ecological destruction and oblivion of communal ethical responsibility contradict Confucian values and philosophy of life. Confucian philosophy of life in intercivilizational dialog contributes to the quest for truth about divine reality in our multicultural public sphere. However, some critics argue that Confucian values and ethical codes correspond to political despotism, patriarchal family culture, social inequality, and economic conservatism. In this regard, Confucian democracy is a contradictory term. Against this critique, modern new Confucian pundits argue that the seeds of democracy and scientific thinking are contained in Confucianism. An issue here is the refurbishing and modernizing of Confucian democratic and scientific elements together with its ethical and pedagogical contribution.5 This entails a hermeneutical task: the retrieval and renewal of Confucian potentialities for our globe along with a critical distanciation from its deficiencies and its hierarchical system. Regarding the debates about Confucianism and modernity, it is not easy to categorize Confucianism as

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a member of an “unholy trinity” along with capitalism and patriarchy as Asian feminists speculate. Is Weber entirely negative toward Chinese religion as stagnant and lacking in progress? Are Confucian ethics similar to Calvinist work ethics grounded in Calvin’s theology of double predestination? Is an idea of Calvinist predestination toward double judgment sociologically comparable to a Confucian ethical conduct of life and ontological self-cultivation? According to Weber, the rational elements of a religion have autonomy and entail far-reaching consequences for the shaping of a practical way of life.6 His methodology is typologically framed by considering what is typically important in the historical realizations of religious ethics. Weber insists that “Confucianism was indifferent to religion,” and that “completely absent in Confucian ethic was any tension between nature and deity, between ethical demand and human shortcoming, consciousness of sin and need for salvation.” 7 This evaluation is connected to economic mentalities to the degree that the rationalization of life conducts underlines economic rationalism. Insofar as Confucianism is rationalist in the sense of religious ethics, Confucian rationality differs from all other western types of practical rationalism (or purpose-driven rationality).8 Weber’s typological sociology of religion attempts to interpret all ruling powers in terms of approximations to the pure, ideal, and ahistorical type. The legitimacy, which ruling power claims, enacts orders in the name of an impersonal norm and a compulsory institution. His sociology of charismatic authority deals with the extraordinary quality of a person. The governed submit to their belief in the extraordinary quality of the specific person. Patriarchy or patriarchalism is categorized along with traditional authority and is characteristic of patriarchal and patrimonial society. In this regard, traditionalist authority is irrational. In the process of disintegrating a patriarchal master’s strict authority, patrimonialism develops its own course distinct from patriarchalism. This is what Weber discerns in a Confucian form of rationality. According to Weber, “Confucian literati were the bearers of progress toward a rational administration and of all ‘intelligence.’ ” 9 This Confucian development imprinted its characteristics on the whole literary tradition of China. The literary education and its subordination under a pontifex in China are absent in the caste order of India. In Confucianism, a decisive turn took place toward pacifism and traditional classics. Weber observes in Confucian education a lack of scientific calculation that is “a very striking feature of Chinese education.” 10 Confucian economic rationality is directed against monopolistic privileges and its bureaucratic meddling is typical of patrimonialism. Confucian administration reserves the right to regulate consumption in terms of dearth or scarcity concerning all sorts of expenditures. As Weber states, “there was the typical aversion against too sharp a social differentiation as determined in a purely economic manner by free exchange in markets.” 11

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Under patrimonial bureaucratic conditions we find no expansive capitalist interests of sufficient strength in Confucian life conduct and values as compared with those in a Calvinistic-Capitalist ethos.12 Weber argues that “Chinese thought has remained rather stuck in the pictorial and the descriptive,” so that “the power of logos, of defining and reasoning, has not been accessible to the Chinese.” 13 Weber assumes that the fixed form of the orthodox interpretation of the classic authors was highly exclusive and too literalistic.14 Unlike Weber’s speculation, however, there was a complicated debate over the interpretation of the Tao principle within Confucian development. This debate unfolded in a complex situation involving a conf lict of the interpretation of the Confucian principle of investigation of external things and the extension of knowledge. The so-called neo-Confucian development is highly creative, synthetic, argumentative, and rationalistic in its critical dialog with Taoism and Buddhism. Nevertheless, Weber does rightly observe that intellectual tools in Confucian philosophy take the form of parable rather than the rational argumentation of the West.15 Analogy and Saying within the Confucian Tradition of Interpretation The Confucian theory of interpretation was raised by Zhu Xi (1130– 1200 CE)—the preeminent scholar and a first-rate analytic and systematic thinker—during the Song Dynasty in China (960–1279 CE). It becomes the driving force for Asian intertextual imagination and analogy in a post-foundational and intercultural framework. The Confucian program of interpretation is connected with the principle of the investigation of external things and the extension of knowledge. According to Zhu, the art of reading aims at experiencing the texts personally by making them one’s own. In reading we must first become intimately familiar with the text. Then ref lecting on it, the ideas of the text become ours. Only through the text does real understanding becomes possible.16 In his hermeneutics of intimate familiarity, Zhu puts priority on the subject matter of the text over the reader’s own prejudice. Effective reading is dependent on the reader’s willingness to expose his/her own biases about the textual world and to be renewed in light of the textual world. Casting aside all preconceived and misguided ideas, the reader strives for the meaning of the text.17 An intimate familiarity with the text underlines the art of meditation, a quiet-sitting immersion into the world of the text. Nonetheless, this meditative approach does not discard the reader’s critical and analytical thinking, but rather, fully appreciates it. Zhu Xi’s meditative art of interpretation is performed in conjunction with the critical and analytical investigation of worldly affairs. Through the investigation of things,

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coupled with the extension of knowledge, a sudden enlightenment breaks through at the end of a lifelong pilgrimage. Since the principle of external things and the principle of the human being are interconnected, apprehending the principle either in things or in oneself is in fact self-realization.18 As Zhu Xi states, “after exerting himself in this way for a long time, he will suddenly find himself possessed of a wide and far-reaching penetration. The qualities of all things, internal and external, subtle and coarse, will all then be apprehended, and the mind, in its entire substance and in its relation to things, will become completely manifest. This is called the investigation of things; this is called the perfection of knowledge.” 19 Zhu’s art of reading and understanding (tu-shu fa) is the way to apprehend the principle and to realize oneself engaged meditatively and analytically in the text. Experiencing intimate familiarity with the text means experiencing the self, which is transformed in the process of the encounter and conf luence with the horizon of the text. In Zhu’s theory of interpretation, the investigation of things consists of the extension of knowledge. In the process of self-cultivation, the Truth appears to the reader beyond a subject/object distinction. This is like polishing a mirror or rescuing a pearl from impure water. Hermeneutically speaking, the truth of the heavenly Principle is hidden, yet it reveals itself through familiarity with the text and the investigation of the actual worldly course of life. For Zhu, the Heavenly Principle is like a pearl lying in muddy water. All one’s efforts must be concentrated toward acquiring this realization through the exercise of reverence and the extension of knowledge.20 The Supreme Ultimate, while present and immanent within all things, “is not cut up into pieces. It is merely like the moon ref lecting itself in ten thousand streams.”21 The relationship between the Principle and each concrete object can be explained by his metaphor: “the moon ref lecting itself in ten thousand streams.” The “moon in the streams” means that the stream replicates the image of the moon. It refers to a mirrored relationship in an analogical sense. The mirror image is analogically connected with the actual sight of the moon through the scientific investigation of things and the extension of knowledge. Here there is a hermeneutical implication for the analogical power of language that Zhu Xi does not fully consider. In the analogy of a relationship between the Truth (the moon) and diverse expressions of it (streams), analogical language is dependent on the reality of the truth. We talk about the truth through analogical speech because the truth comes into language. Diverse expressions and meanings are all analogically related to the unum of the truth. In Zhu Xi’s analogical imagination all different expressions of the truth are related, in varying ways, to the Tao. This view is closer to the analogy of attribution in an Aristotelian-Thomist sense, which states that different things depend on the common thing but are related in different ways to it.22

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The analogy of attribution or relation contends that the many things in different relations to the unum are related to it in a relationship of dependence. Hermeneutically speaking, an analogy of attribution or relation is constituted by an analogans (one that makes the analogy) operating upon the analogatum (what is analogized).23 The hermeneutical dependence of the analogatum on the analogans underlines the ontological dimension of the dependency of being upon God or Tao. From this we know that God (Tao) is known to creatures through other creatureliness in an analogical sense of similarity-in-dissimilarity. However, if this notion is disconnected from the mystery of the truth, Zhu Xi’s concept of truth would run into a monadic direction, devaluing the diverse ways of the saying of the truth in ten thousand streams. The whole truth cannot be spoken of in any one linguistic conceptualization. Each ref lects different dimensions of the truth, perhaps uniquely visible to particular cultures. The truth is the sum of the ref lections in the ten thousand streams and more. A poetic-metaphoric genius marks an analogical expression that places the similar in the dissimilar. This comes closer to valuing genuine dissimilarities as disclosures of aspects of “the truth,” the whole of which is beyond the grasp of any single language—or even of all languages. A participatory act in the originating event that includes a critical ref lection on worldly affairs is at the heart of an analogical imagination that recognizes diverse expressions in relation to the truth. To the degree that all our words that are to some extent polysemic, the univocity or plurivocity of the human discourse is the accomplishment of the contexts. A word has the multiple meaning—the polysemy that is the pivot of semantics. In the case of metaphor, the word as event is a cumulative entity, capable of acquiring new dimensions of meaning.24 In Christian theological hermeneutics God is expressed as the subject of speaking the word into being, and Christ is said to be the incarnate Word (Logos). The essence of language is the internal word (verbum interius) of God. In theological hermeneutics the gospel is defined as analogous speaking about God. The analogy of faith is defined as the precondition for proper speech about God. Gospel, as analogous speaking about God, comes as the event of God’s speech. The analogy of faith is enacted in the event of Verbum Dei coming into language. Anselm’s dictum— “something beyond which nothing greater can be conceived”—qualifies analogical speaking about God by respecting God’s dissimilarity, which may speak to the world of faith through religious outsiders. As we already explored, Karl Barth once integrates analogical speaking in Anselm’s sense into his theology of analogia fidei in his Church Dogmatics and later proposes the irregular side of God’s dissimilar speaking through lights and words in the world. The word of reconciliation and Jesus’ use of secular parables are instrumental in articulating Barth’s analogy of relation in the context of religious pluralism.25 Anselm’s dictum corresponds to the fundamental statement of philosophical Taoism—what is spoken of is not the permanent Tao. Analogical

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language has little to do with literalism. Analogy is an approximation to the truth of God in God’s eschatological coming. The gospel corresponds with the living voice of God. God relates God’s self to the world, and is thus expressed in language. As a language event the analogical character of language is to be expressed in the form of a metaphor or parable: “the moon ref lecting itself in ten thousand streams.” The mystery of Tao (or Li-principle in Zhu Xi’s language) comes into language that is essentially metaphorical and parabolic. Metaphor expresses more that what is said in language. This represents the creative freedom of language and its multiple production of meaning. Analogical hermeneutics advocates for diverse interpretations on many levels and with many approaches, preserving an analogy of difference in its similar and proportionate expression. For Zhu Xi, God (or the Heavenly Principle–Li) appears all over the world ref lecting itself in many streams and thus enabling analogical language that allows speech about the truth. Religious language does not express an abstract analogy (mere likeness), but arises out of our existential response to and linguistic imagination of a shared experience of the disclosure of Being itself. In a theological teaching of analogy that is grounded in Christ’s incarnation, God allows God’s self to be manifested and externalized to all who are analogically related. God, as the infinite horizon of our whole experience of the world, moves us, stirs us, and is always present to us. God’s mission of of word-event expresses itself in the language form of a metaphor that is understood as analogy. God’s mission of word-event, as the activity of God’s kingdom, relates itself to the world in a relationship of correspondence. The mission of God’s word-event comes into language, entering into the world as divine self-communication with the world and human beings, like “ref lecting itself in ten thousand streams.” Confucian language may become an analogical servant to the universal activity of God’s mission of word-event in an Asian context as it encounters and considers the religious language of the Christian faith. A hermeneutics of word-event—as seen in light of the irregularity of Verbum Dei—embraces the church and the world and explicates the aspect of God’s coming into analogical language without eradicating the similarity-indissimilarity between Christian language and Confucian language. In this mirror-appearance, God (or Tao) reveals and manifests itself for us. The revelation of the truth does not contradict an analogical aspect of interpretation in the investigation of worldly affairs or the expansion of the horizon of knowledge of the life world. Truth and method are not disconnected from each other as overt in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. But in the process of meditative and analytical thinking, the truth reveals itself while inspiring human scientific-methodological investigation of worldly affairs and enabling ontological extension of knowledge in the public sphere. Nonetheless, the truth is not a prisoner of human experience or language, but remains an inspirational horizon in a lifelong process of interpretive engagement with the mystery of God.

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At this juncture, it is significant to compare Zhu Xi’s metaphor of the moon ref lecting in the streams to Gadamer’s speculative metaphor of the castle in the lake.26 When looking at the castle’s ref lection in the lake, the lake replicates the castle’s image. Although it is like an appearance, it allows the thing to appear in terms of a mirror image. Gadamer pursues a universal dimension of language with respect to the event of speech, because “Being that can be understood is language.”27 Gadamer frames the mirror relation linguistically and accentuates the universal function of language. In a similar fashion, Jüngel, in his theological hermeneutics proposes his basic thesis: God speaks—human being corresponds. In a linguistic conceptualization of analogy, Jüngel tends to take God’s speakability in a positive way without being attached to univocity (anthropomorphism) or equivocity (divine ineffability). As speech that addresses, the language of revelation renews and transforms human language through the correspondence of the Word of God in a hermeneutical-ontological configuration. The aspect of a greater similarity within a great dissimilarity is used hermeneutically by Jüngel to defend and favor univocity while advocating a view of God’s downward movement in Christ from above. Here analogy is a language event in an eminent way, retaining creative freedom. Ontologically, a human being is a linguistic being. From a linguistic-hermeneutical perspective, Jüngel articulates an analogical account of the relationship between God and creatures as via positiva. The thinkability, speakability, and humanity of God constitute the epistemological, the linguistic, and the ontological grounds for analogy in ever greater correspondence between God and human beings.28 However, Zhu Xi’s concept of analogy tends to defend the equivocity of Tao’s revelation in diverse and multiple streams. In advocating Tao’s aspect of self-manifestation, Zhu avoids sidestepping human cultural and linguistic imagination as conditioned by a particular-diverse location. The truth of Tao is conditioned by the receiver, transcending its linguistic expression. Thus, Zhu Xi’s hermeneutic is analogically structured, recognizing in language a particular-diverse expression of the truth. Zhu Xi’s theory of interpretation allows an irregular theology to institute, integrate, and renew an analogy of the other in light of the dynamism of God’s act of speaking in multiple horizons. Here, an analogy of the other emerges in relation to the universality of God’s word-event. This perspective offers a post-foundational (or postcolonial) insight allowing Asian irregular theology to transcend the limitations of the Western Enlightenment framework regarding the emergence of World Christianity.29 Zhu Xi’s hermeneutics are of an analogical-meditative character, allowing for the truth to be expressed in many particular and diverse expressions. Zhu Xi’s hermeneutic of investigation can be called pilgrimatics of interpretation,30 demonstrating a theory of interpretation that provides a dialectical revealing of the truth without side-stepping the significance of an epistemological investigation of worldly affairs. Analogy is a dialectical

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concept that preserves the “otherness” of the other within the dissimilarity of the mystery of Tao. In this light I take a step further to radicalizing Zhu Xi’s hermeneutical insight without being content with his ethical ontology of self-cultivation. A language of analogy is a realized concept prophetically engaged in the life of the minjung who are analogically more close to God’s mission of word-event. This view is more obvious in Wang Yangming’s theory of interpretation than in Zhu Xi’s. Before dealing with Wang’s hermeneutical dimension, it is important in a comparative study of hermeneutics to deal with the Western concept of analogy in Plato and Aristotle. Excursus: Dialectics and Analogy in Plato and Aristotle Real and analogous knowledge of God from a theological perspective begins where the incarnate Word has spoken of God. The Christian theology of the Trinity indicates the subjectivity of God that cannot be abandoned in revelation. The Barthian term Deus dixit (God spoke) does not need to remain a past event of the Word of God. But it must be understood in light of the act of God’s speaking in an ongoing way, extra nos. This Word coming to us as event and challenge can be heard in church as well as in the extra-ecclesial sphere. A theological engagement with the act of God’s speech does not discourage our social-existential interpretation and participation in what God’s Word acts or directs. There is a social-existential relevance between the Word of God and human participation in it. A hermeneutical analysis of culturally transmitted documents, socialpolitical discourse and any related power structures, and economic relations can be a form of correlation with the activity of Verbum Dei in the cultural and socio-political realm. An analogical way of thinking that is conceptualized as moving toward the truth does not belittle a critical, analytical, and dialectical way of thinking that contributes to and complements the necessity of an open-ended analogical theology. A dialectical perspective is helpful in grasping the incomprehensible reality of God’s speech event. The language and the objective happening are not completely congruent, even to the degree that the language speaks something contradictory to and demands plausibility for the same objective happening. Hegel’s principle of dialectics implies this. In his teachings on poetry, Parmenides instructs that the truth comes to language in such a way that it lies in a place outside of the world but is revealed through the gods. The truth of Being is nonbecoming and nonperishable. However, in the horizon of world-experience the external things (the beings) appear to be becoming, growing, and changeable, according to what we can possibly receive sensually empirically. It is important to speak of the difference between the Being and the beings in a corresponding-dialectical manner instead of as contradiction. In this

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way, we can speak of the difference between the simple-unmoved Being and the diverse and f lexible things in a dialectical way. Being is known in terms of the inherent correspondence between being, thought, and speech. We see such a conceptual model later in Heraclitus.31 However, the term analogy does not appear in Parmenides or Heraclitus. In the Platonic tradition there is a conviction of the power of the logos that represents the Being. Logos (a rational and logical word) represents the Being. In explaining dialectics, we must pay attention to Plato’s parable of the cave. In his book Republic (514a –519a)32 Plato likens the ordinary human to a prisoner in a cave, forced to gaze at shadows. The human being strives to see the light outside the cave that brings illumination to the truth. According to Plato, there is a dialectical way that turns away from the shadows of the cave toward the light of the illuminating sun outside. The captivity in the dark cave identifies the situation of human life in the world. The dialectical art of science lies in perceiving the world of visible and empirical things as the shadow world—the world of phenomena—in order to arrive at the highest Being, namely Good. Dialectical movement is an endeavor to journey forward to view the Good. Dialectics are integrated into praxis in order to bring motion to the dialectical movement. Dialectics work on contradiction—coming out of the cave and perceiving the world of phenomena as the world of shadow. Sensory experience is unmasked as an appearance and the perception corresponding to it is qualified as mere human opinion when comparing the superior instance to the empirical world. This superior instance is the logos—that is the reason word. With the help of the reason word, one can transcend sensual perception and arrive at the Idea of Good. Thus, dialectics are described as the capacity to arrive at the concept of essence of every being. This is an attempt to return to what is, in terms of the logical word or logos, the essential self until one is able to grasp the Good through the dialectical thought.33 If one arrives at the conclusion of beings as self-thinking in reference to the Ideal and views them in light of the Ideal, one is capable of perceiving the Ideal through many and diverse existing phenomena. Thus, the contradiction between the Ideal and the empirical world can be refined in terms of an analogy that proves to be a correspondence in contradiction. Dialectics in the Platonic sense are skillful thought taking place in the performance of a question and answer that can be qualified as an analogy in contradiction to one’s thought. Analogy keeps God and the realities of the world together in proportion. Analogy and dialectics are interconnected with each other. However, Plato’s analogical dialectic has a limitation in connection to the actual worldly life. This disconnection is a consequence of Plato’s veneration of the human soul with its journey toward the sun and its subsequent devaluing of the human body. Dialectical thinking must be refurbished in its analysis of worldly affairs so that the language of analogy is sharpened in connection to the discourse of dissimilarity in people’s

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life. Aristotle’s dialectics is different from Plato’s spiritual-dialectical movement. Plato and Aristotle used a wider notion of analogy. They saw analogy as a shared abstraction. They accepted that comparisons, metaphors, and images (allegories) could be used as valid arguments, and sometimes called them analogies. For Aristotle, similar relations between two dissimilar things can be named an analogy. Therefore, analogy is “a special case of metaphor” and expresses a “parity of relations between two completely dissimilar things.”34 Based on similar relations between dissimilar things, analogy can be a proportion, allowing for a comparison of two things within. This refers to the proper analogy, which is an analogy of proportionality, namely an analogia proportionalitatis.35 This analogy requires correspondence rather than proportion. On the other hand, Aristotle states that “being,” as exhibited in the ten categories, is analogous with a primary sense for substances. Concepts are abstractions of things and are the meanings of words. Thus analogy of meaning traces analogy of being. For instance, the moon is in the primary and genuine sense of the word. When we say “the moon is white,” the meaning of is must be qualified. The moon could change its color and yet remain the moon while the quality of “whiteness” has no separate existence apart from the moon. We use the term analogously by referencing its first and primary meaning. Thus there occurs ambiguity or multiple meanings in the usage of our language. This possibility is known as univocal, equivocal, and analogical predication. Analogous speech is the middle ground between univocity and equivocity. The same word is used for two different things in a similar sense, or with relatively different meanings when relating various things to a common thing. The different things are related to something mutual, each in a different way. Hence, analogy is present insofar as the same word is used to express different things without being a univocal-identical meaning or an equivocal-different one.36 This analogy is the analogy of relation or the analogy of attribution and it presupposes a dynamic relationship of dependence of the various things on the one common thing. Such an analogy is constituted by an analogans (one who makes the analogy). The various things named after it, as the analogatum (that which is analogized), depend on the analogans. This hermeneutical dependence of analogy entails an ontological implication expressing the relationship between God and creatures in the philosophical and theological arena. This analogy in a traditional sense is located in greater dissimilarity within an ever-greater similarity that supports the thesis of the inexpressibility of God.37 In the Platonic tradition, dialectical life in the soul’s journey is disengaged from a socially embodied life in the public sphere. However, if social reality is an indispensable part in the interpretation of human life with reference to the ultimate thing and worldly affairs, the representation of daily life becomes a real basis of interpretation. In Aristotle’s theory of

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interpretation, we notice that interpretation is a method of comprehending human reality. In Peri hermeneias (On Interpretation), the second treatise in the Organon, Aristotle defines interpretation as enunciation. For him, meaningful discourse is hermeneias—interpretation of reality. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle contends that a human being is social by nature.38 This concept culminates in Politics with his concluding definition of the human being as a political animal.39 Interpretation has a vox significativa, a meaningful voice. Interpretation is the signification of the sentence which Aristotle calls logos. Interpretation in the sense of textual exegesis is the enunciation of the truth or falsity of a statement.40 Aristotle’s understanding of human life in a sociopolitical context is connected with the power of human speech. Speech serves to indicate what is useful or harmful, and also what is just or unjust. Aristotle appreciates social reality by critically integrating Plato’s idea of Form into his concept of actuality (entelecheia or energeia). This implies that essence is underlined in the material element. Against Plato, Aristotle reinterprets a Platonic concept of an irrational reality (material thing) through the concept of potentiality (or tendency toward new perfection). In this light, it is helpful for the language of analogy to involve the social, material realm. In the social sphere, analogy dynamically expresses the dependence of different material things on the common thing through the concept of potentiality.41 A material thing determines a potentiality for activity in which the corresponding activity has the character of an end (telos). Aristotle’s concept of the dialectics of becoming or developing differentiates him from Plato’s dialectics. The pathos of movement or becoming appears to be a new concept in Aristotle. Analogy can be seen as socially and materially engaged because the material element and the Form are integrated into a relationship that is becoming and developing. In reference to the dynamism of a material element, Aristotle’s definition of a human being as a political animal paves the way for understanding the importance of human life in light of interpretation. According to his theory of interpretation, social economic justice is fundamentally important to society. Nevertheless, we cannot sidestep the limitation and misuse of Aristotle’s philosophy in Spain’s American involvement. Aristotelian ontological thought—some people were born natural slaves—caused the Spanish to consider indigenous peoples as inferior in their Spanish Catholic monopoly of American colonization thus it upheld the Christian notion of armed conquest before evangelization.42 Despite limitation, it is noteworthy to mention Aristotle’s contribution to economic life. Aristotle differentiates the need-oriented household economy (oikonomia) from the money-accumulating economy. When people pursue the second form of economy, the subsequent creation of monopolies, price speculation, and usury are extremely dangerous to community life at large. Aristotle illustrates this in the story of King

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Midas, who wished everything he touched to turn into gold. In Aristotle’s time, to a certain extent, the Greek economy was already exposed to and dependent on large-scale trade and credit capital. Aristotle denounced this principle of an economy based on gain and profit as nonnatural and perilous.43 Aristotle’s theory of interpretation coupled with analogy implies an important prophetic insight into the unity of theory and praxis in a given social location. For Aristotle, however, the act of interpretation is engaged with the material text, or language as used in the public sphere. Interpretation thus holds the possibility of transforming the world of the Idea in the service of human public interest. Implicitly, it indicates an investigation of human activity in all aspects of human life. A poetic understanding of human action is not separated from an ethical concern for suffering or passion. Mimesis and poesis in the Aristotelian sense imply the disclosure of a world.44 Wang Yangming and Socially Engaged Interpretation Given Aristotle’s theory of interpretation, it is significant to further examine the Confucian theory of interpretation represented by Wang Yangming (1472–1529). The unity between theory and praxis finds its validity and development within the Confucian tradition. Confucian hermeneutics also has an important place in the intellectual development of Wang Yangming, a pivotal scholar of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Wang seriously studied Zhu Xi’s doctrine of the investigation of things.45 A conf lict of interpretation between Zhu Xi and Wang takes place within the Confucian tradition, demonstrating a creative reception of, and a critical engagement with the tradition of Confucian teaching. This conf lict proposes a new way of interpreting the Confucian texts and their authoritative commentaries in different contexts. Taking a step further than Zhu Xi, Wang identifies the mind as coextensive with the truth of the universe, constituting the life horizon of a human being. The mind in itself is called pure knowing or intuitive knowledge (liang zhi). In this light, Wang argues that Zhu Xi is inclined to divide the mind from the truth of the principle.46 Wang’s concept of pure knowledge, which is already fully formed moral virtue, articulates a spontaneous manifestation of the Heavenly principle to the degree that it is not obscured by interference from selfish desires and superficial opinions.47 In spite of a parallel between the Buddhist teaching of original Buddha nature and Wang’s concept of innate knowledge, Wang is not blind to the error and limitation of Buddhism. “Being attached to the nondistinction of good and evil, the Buddhists neglect everything and therefore are incapable of governing the world.” 48 The hermeneutics of self, in Wang’s view, can be traced back to a deeper horizon of the ground of being, which as the infinite horizon,

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constitutes human consciousness and the actual course of life. To acquire innate knowledge as the ground of being, Wang’s hermeneutics of elimination aims at a movement to return to the original substance of theory and praxis.49 In the light of the principle of the unity of knowledge and action, Wang contends that Zhu Xi wrongly identifies the higher attainments of exerting one’s mind to the utmost and knowing one’s nature one-sidedly and inadequately with the investigation of things and the extension of knowledge.50 It is certain that according to Wang the extension of knowledge occurs in the investigation of worldly things, or affairs. Things are the objects toward which thought is intentionally directed. For instance, when our thought is intent on and directed toward serving our parents, the serving of our parents becomes one of these “things.” Things or affairs imply the life context of a human being with others in the public realm. Actual life situations constitute and inf luence one’s thoughts and intentionality with regard to the objects and events in the world as well as human internal consciousness. Wang interprets the investigation of things to mean rectifying. This means “eliminate[ing] what is incorrect in the mind so as to preserve the correctness of its original substance.”51 Wang’s concept of mind unfolds from within—interconnected with the past, present, and future—and articulates an aspect of projecting social existential praxis for the care of others and in recognizing their life experience. Liang zhi is thus embedded in the actual events of one’s own life. Human understanding or investigation of things in the world is out of the question when conceived of apart from one’s life connection within the world. Praxis-leading knowledge comes from the ontological apprehension of a deeper meaning of the horizon of human life in reference to the public sphere. Thus, a dialectical unity of theory and praxis finds its locus in an ontological sense, existentially and socially engaged in people’s actual life in the world. Wang’s reassertion of personal morality is socially responsible. Wang’s sense of social responsibility is clear when he wants to distinguish his own convictions from Buddhists or Taoists. In nourishing the mind, Confucians have never departed from external things and events. The external world exists always in reference to the self. If we accept Wang’s definition of things as that to which the operation of the mind is directed, the real world in our lives turns out to be the experienced world. To the extent that the light of liang zhi shines like the sun behind the clouds, the truth is to be concretely comprehended in connection with daily human life in the world. Subsequently, the dynamic quality of the speech act of Tao (liang zhi) is not confined to the Confucian classics, Confucius’, or Mencius’s teaching. The dynamic quality of Tao’s saying is appreciated more than the said: the written text. According to Wang, the core of the Confucian written tradition is to be understood as a way of eliminating or deconstructing the complex world of the text for the sake of reconstructing a deeper meaning. A critical-ref lective

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attitude toward the text is appreciated in light of the subject matter of the dynamic action of Tao’s speech (liang zhi)that invites a critical ref lective engagement with the text. Through this process, the subject matter is interpreted differently than in the classics and the interpreter is likewise renewed and transformed through such an ontological engagement with the subject matter in the present horizon of people’s actual lives. Therefore, the classics have a qualified authority to the extent that the liang zhi in the texts speaks to or corresponds with one’s own liang zhi, grounded in one’s contemporary life context. In the course of learning and interpretation, Wang focuses on what is fundamental in the subject matter of the text—namely the dynamic quality of Tao’s speech event. Here all the Six Classics are footnotes of the Tao.52 The classics and the sage authors are not the focus of interpretation, but the liang zhi in past history and its presence in one’s own present social location is the driving force for interpretation. Truth and method are embedded with the dynamic presence of Tao’s action of speech in our own particular life context and experience. At this juncture, it is instructive to introduce the Chinese attitude toward the mystery of Tao that seems to be relevant to Wang’s view of Tao as the original Saying. Duke Huan, seated above in his hall, was reading a book and the wheelwright Bian was making a wheel below. Laying aside his hammer and chisel, Bian went up the steps, and said, “I venture to ask your Grace what words you are reading?” The duke said, “The words of the sages.” “Are those sages alive?” Bian continued. “They are dead,” was the reply. “Then,” said the other, “what you, my Ruler, are reading is only the dregs and sediments of those old men.” The duke said, “How should you, a wheelwright, have anything to say about the book which I am reading? If you can explain yourself, very well; if you cannot, you shall, die!” The wheelwright said, “Your servant will look at the thing from the point of view of his own art. In making a wheel, if I proceed gently, that is pleasant enough, but the workmanship is not strong. If I proceed violently, that is toilsome and the joining does not fit. If the movements of my hand are neither (too) gentle nor (too) violent, the idea in my mind is realized. But I cannot tell (how to do this) by word of mouth; there is a knack in it. I cannot teach the knack to my son, nor can my son learn it from me. Thus it is that I am in my seventieth year, and am (still) making wheels in my old age. But these ancients, and what it was not possible for them to convey, are dead and gone: so then what you, my Ruler, are reading is but their dregs and sediments!”53 Confucian scholars can generally repudiate the philosophical and dialectic thinking as stated in this story because the argument disregards any content or improvement in human nature and knowledge. They thought it as a small knowledge.54 However, in Wang’s view, Tao itself contains, transcending the textuality, the revealing dynamism of Being-Word as related to people’s actual lives.

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As Heidegger said, Tao manifests itself as alētheia in the act of thoughtful and mysterious speech, namely the original Saying. Tao, seen in the dynamism of the speech act, comes to us as language, heeding the unspoken. Language, which speaks by discourse, is grounded in primordial silence. “Authentic silence is possible only in genuine discourse.”55 Later Heidegger altered his view by stating that silence as such is “Ent-sprechen,” a corresponding.56 In listening to the speech of Tao, the “Word of Tao” reveals itself through the human words, so that human beings get involved in the dynamic process of the Tao in the public sphere of human life. In light of the original Saying of Tao, Wang’s eliminating hermeneutic leads to his critique of the Confucian texts as well as of traditional hierarchical authority, while articulating the equality of people in the actual course of daily life. Going deeper by way of elimination is paired with a return to the public sphere of people’s lives in which liang zhi is also dynamically present. This implies a shift of interpretation from the written text toward the real lives of those ordinary people that are shaped, conditioned, and connected by actual worldly affairs. In light of the dynamic quality of Tao, people’s life experiences and horizons in the world of things or affairs are fully integrated into Wang’s hermeneutics of elimination and engagement. The unsaid in people’s lives belongs to the saying, rather than to what is said. The dynamic quality of God’s event of speech is open-ended, never finished, and never exhausted in human language. As participation in a shared meaning, understanding depends on that which is not said, and cannot be said, especially in light of the irregular side of Tao’s speaking through the dissimilarity of people’s lives. Tao’s speech through the others becomes the driving force behind interpreting written texts and institutionalized social systems for the sake of the people. The legacy of Zhu and Wang demonstrates that it is worthwhile to develop an Asian analogical-discursive theory of interpretation in light of the dynamic quality of God’s Saying through the other. The analogy of the other finds its ethical validity in the dynamism of the mission of word-event for people on the underside of history. If God comes into the language event through the ugly face of Jesus, Asian hermeneutics takes seriously the dynamism of the irregularity of God’s act of speech through the ugly face of massa peditionis and Asian religious classics. This is a hermeneutical integration of the horizon of biblical narratives with the Asian analogical imagination of God’s saying in the reality of people’s actual lives. Having considered this, my analogical–discursive theory of interpretation takes a step further than Zhu and Wang, by radicalizing their insight toward scientifically investigating the dominant structure of the episteme built on power and knowledge relations in a social location and to extend God’s dynamic Saying (extra-biblical an irregular way of God’s word event) over the said (the world of text; intratextuality) to the dissimilar and alien discourse of the people. In the process of the critical investigation of human

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life in the public sphere, sentential knowledge of the subject matter of the text is extended and expanded toward God’s act of speaking. Thus my Asian hermeneutic upholds a prophetic orientation and interest in the emancipation of the mission of Verbum Dei challenging neocolonial civilization. A postcolonial concern can be grounded in this hermeneutical and transformative light. The meaning of God’s word as mission is appropriated in a new light as it engages the Asian emancipatory-analogical imagination while contextualizing the Western theological framework in an Asian configuration. Here, an Asian theory of interpretation deepens an analogical relationship between textuality (Schriftlichkeit) and discursivity (Sprachlichkeit) in light of the irregularity of word-event. God’s Narrative and Poetic Imagination in Intertextuality Asian hermeneutic attempts to go deeper into the subject-object language of scripture as it analogically and discursively relates the sociopolitical reality of minjung and the narratives of Asian religious texts to the subject matter of God’s intratextual narrative. Thus it aims to discover the primordial, existential, and social-cultural intention of the biblical narratives by proposing a hermeneutic of the theological subject matter in an analogical and intratextual reconstruction. The narrative forms of the scripture are scientifically analyzed and investigated with respect to social material conditions and relations in the life settings of the text. In order to clarify the biblical subject matter (God’s Saying in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit) and communicate its event and meaning to people of East Asian culture, it is essential to scientifically and critically investigate the subject matter of God’s word-event and extend this knowledge in the public sphere in light of God’s speech event which takes place in every direction and in all ways. My proposal of missiology of God’s word event in the public sphere is a theological-hermeneutical endeavor to develop and deepen God’s narrative in light of the universality of God’s act of speech with respect to the religious cultural life world of rank-and-file people and the sociopolitical reality of minjung. Inculturation without prophetic commitment is vulnerable to metaphysical speculation, while emancipation without recognizing religious outsiders is blind to political excessivism or reductionism. The classical concept of missio Dei is challenged by a further question: Where does the theology of the mission of word-event begin in matters pertaining to God’s Trinitarian-historical action in the world? My argument is that a theology of mission begins where God speaks in the Torah, through Jesus Christ, in extra-biblical religious scriptures and narratives, and through the face of massa perditionis. Respecting others as God’s extraordinary and transversal way of communication is part of a prophetic dimension of God’s word mission in the context of postcolonial emancipation and an intercultural enrichment of the Christian narrative.

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Here, a poetic imagination is appropriated to uphold an aesthetic dimension of theologia crucis and the human praxis of compassion in commitment to God’s word mission that is construed in transformative recognition of the texts of religious others. According to Aristotle, mimesis is neither a copy nor the duplication of reality. Rather, it is poesis—construction or creation. Aristotle contends that tragedy is a mimesis of a high, complete action enhanced through speech. A tragedy is a mimesis of an action, which implies that people are engaged in it. The primacy of a narrative understanding becomes related to a sociological or structural explanation of human life in society and history.57 Here, pathos (suffering) is an important component in representing praxis. A poetic understanding of human action is not separated from the suffering of passion that an ethic articulates. A textual world is a relation of mimesis in a metaphorical relation of resemblance—of similarities and difference. A poem is an attempt to fulfill the desire to put into words an epiphany of the truth experienced in the factual context of human life. This implies an understanding of God as the infinite horizon in which we are moved, stirred, and enlightened through our experience of the world. As in front of the Areopagus Paul says, “God gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.” “. . . God allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God”. . . in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17: 25–28). In this light, it is essential to explore a poetic dimension of God’s wordevent in the perspective of the intertextual horizon. Bonheffer’s poem Christians and Pagans indicates a paradigmatic example of the mission of God’s compassion in the world: 1 Men go to God when they are sore bestead, Pray to him for succour, for his peace, for bread, For mercy for them sick, sinning, or dead; All men do so, Christian and unbelieving 2 Men go to God when he is sore bestead, Find him poor and scorned, without shelter or bread, Whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead; Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving 3 God goes to every man when sore bestead, Feeds body and spirit with his bread; For Christians, pagans alike he hangs dead, And both alike forgiving.58 This poem is of hermeneutical character, offering new ways of seeing and thinking about the actual world. The cross is a parrhēsia parable

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allowing us to interpret who God is from the standpoint of the subjugated and castigated. The exposed f lesh of the crucified one uncovers any secret of self and dissolves it to God’s exposure in the naked face of Jesus Christ. It is common to people in need to seek and appeal to God. However, the God of Israel in Jesus Christ to whom the Christian appeal, is not a Deus ex machina but the One who stands in grief by the poor and the scorned who lack shelter or bread. The crucified one becomes foundational for understanding God’s compassion, which embraces both Christians and non-Christians alike. In the death of Jesus Christ, God is a God who protests against the perpetrators of suffering by co-participating in the life of the victim. Genuine forgiveness comes from the one who is castigated and victimized. In theologia crucis God is the God of compassion, bringing forgiveness and reconciliation to the world through Jesus—the innocent Jewish victim. Job’s protest to his friend’s justification of innocent suffering is taken up and embraced in the God of Israel who is present and suffers in Jesus Christ. In the final instance, the perpetrator will not triumph the victim (Max Horkheimer). God’s grace of forgiveness bids farewell to the logic of sacrifice. Poiesis is meshed with mimetic praxis in seeking the transformation of the actual world. Poetic reference and mimetic praxis gain subversive potential in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal Son. The parabolic language of the forgiveness of sin turns the conventional orientation upside down while simultaneously changing the life of the prodigal. God’s word of compassion, in the form of Christ’s death, constitutes an entry point for interreligious exchange in matters pertaining to compassion toward non-Christian religions. A Buddhist poem points specifically to this possibility. A poem for the compassion of a Bodhisattva can be found in Santideva: May I be the doctor and the medicine And may I be the nurse For all sick beings in the world Until everyone is healed. May a rain of food and drink descend To clear away the pain of thirst and hunger And during the aeon of famine May I myself change into food and drink I become an inexhaustible treasure For those who are poor and destitute; May I turn into all things they could need And may these be placed close beside them.59 A spirituality of compassion accentuates the universal reality of the interbeing among all creatures. Behind the compassion is the Bodhisattva’s refusal of enlightenment. Instead of benefiting from the enlightenment for him/herself, the Bodhisattva goes to the samsaric (full of suffering)

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ocean of interbeing, by identifying him/herself with those who are sick, hungry, thirsty, poor, and destitute. Compassion turns into identification. Kenosis is “not one” with the fullness of compassion, but “not two” with it. Buddhist-qualified nondual, analogical language continues to express God’s wisdom in God’s foolishness which “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived” (1 Cor 2: 9) A Buddhist sense of theologia crucis in the Bodhisattva’s poetic imagination is socially engaged. Zen Buddhism points at the original face of interbeing, the naked and emptied heart, full of compassion. Emptiness does not differ from compassion. Likewise, the water and the waves are stirred up in the ocean. The water can be said to be identical and nonidentical with the cave. The transformation of our consciousness in perception of the qualified nondual and analogical interbeing becomes the indispensable basis for Buddhist social engagement for peace, recognition of the other, and social justice in the world. For Buddhist hermeneutics, Thich Nhat Hanh states, “as reality can only be lived and experienced, Buddhist doctrine would never have as an aim the description of reality; the doctrine serves only as a method, as a guide, to the practitioner in his experience of this reality.”60 So Buddha comes into a brotherly relationship with Jesus. This Buddhist sense of communal altruism and identification with others faces a different interpretation of the suffering of the innocent victim in the dark night of the world as poetically elaborated in Confucian-Taoist hybridity. Ruan Ji’s poem illustrates the aesthetics of nonaction by transforming the Buddhist poem of compassion into utopian longing. Ruan Ji (210–263 CE), one of the seven sages in the bamboo grove in ancient China, was a major poet of the Wei dynasty (220–265 CE). During his lifetime, the power struggles in the court were extremely cruel and ruthless. Under such circumstances, Ruan Ji experienced the death of friends and sought an escapist attitude. He found solace in poetry, philosophical Taoism, music, and drinking. As a Confucian scholar, he did a remarkable job of integrating Taoist insights into the beauty of nature with a utopian praxis of nonaction, or action without attachment to it. Works righteousness does not liberate us for freedom. Praxis grounded in human nature is productive, creating a space for establishing utopian beauty on earth. Songs of My Heart includes eightytwo poems selected from Ruan Ji’s poetic writings (XIX). Here, we find a good example of a quest for utopian beauty in the dark night of the suffering world: There is a fair woman in the west, who is as bright as sunlight. She wears a dress of the finest silk and jewelry shines from her left, her right. Her face is a charm, so full of grace, lightly perfuming the breeze.

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Climbing upward, she keeps watch for her loved one, holding her sleeves, she faces the morning sun. She hovers, she drifts through the sky, waving her sleeves, she dances, f lies like the wind, like a cloud, in [a] trance. Every so often, she glances at me, but for me this beauty is out of reach. Left alone, I lament my fate.61 Ruan Ji aestheticizes the pain of the world and his personal lamentation. He symbolizes utopian beauty in a spirit of resistance against the unfair world full of violence and injustice. Ruan Ji’s poem intends to revise and renew a Confucian rationality from a Taoist’s perspective in order to counter the current Confucian institutionalized ideology that sanctions and legitimates violent domination by the powerful. A poetic discourse entails a utopian subversion. Three poems in particular retain a transhistorical effect and a transcultural communicability. These poems speak for people in different places and times who are interested in critically transcending the status quo of a society by recreating and reconfiguring society in a different course and direction. The mission of God’s narrative can be discerned and recognized in suffering, ethical compassion with the other, and utopian longing for beauty on earth that challenges a social reality of pseudobeauty in the institutionalized world. A poetic imagination upholds the intertextual horizon of God’s word-event in our globe. In the midst of the dark night of the world, Bonhoeffer’s sense of divine suffering and compassion encounters the Bodhisattva’s compassionate ethical commitment to those who are in need. Ruan Ji’s sense of suffering portrayed as aesthetic longing presupposes a utopian ethics of “nonaction,” which paradoxically resists the Confucian legitimating of the institutionalized status quo. This protest is connected with a Taoist sense of Tao’s presence in people’s spontaneity and in the life of a natural watercourse. In an intertextual-poetic imagination, God’s word-event gains new meaning by reframing the theology of the cross in light of divine suffering, compassion, and aesthetic resistance to the status quo. Theologia crucis as a parrhēsia form of the mission of word-event is interpreted as a rejection of a western form of the theology of the cross that is one-sidedly developed in the direction of individualistic atonement or the model of God’s delivering up of Jesus in a sacrificial sense. Theologia crucis in an intercultural imagination sharpens mission of word-event as it actualizes the interdependence of creaturely life, aesthetic compassion, and ethical responsibility for the other that is connected with Lazarus-minjung who are burdened by the sin of the powerful and the privileged in the world. Parrhēsia as a verbal activity bears witness to and upholds the subject matter of the gospel in the life world of intratextual experience regarding

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divine suffering, human commitment to compassion, and a longing for beauty, which resists the reified pseudobeauty that is generated by commercialism in today’s context. A sociocritical concept of the discursive activity of parrhēsia undergirds the line and direction of mission of wordevent practicing the subject matter of God’s narrative in an intercultural and sociopolitical location. If evangelism has an aesthetic dimension for Paul, it is important to mention that an aesthetic dimension of interreligious witness comes from our recognition of religious outsiders in the life world of God’s irregular and transversal narrative. The irregular side of God does not contradict the revealed God in Christ and the Holy Spirit. The ecclesial discourse of the missionary activity of the triune God is enriched and deepened as we encounter extra-biblical narratives and poetic imagination in the world of other faiths through which God speaks and is pleased to enrich and bless Christian narrative. In an interpretive and analogical reframing of the missiology of God’s word-event, the wisdom, religious classics, and religious experiences of other faiths are appreciated as a medium of God’s extraordinary and transversal communication with the world. Thereby, theologia crucis and parrhēsia always remain a corrective to an optimistic metaphysics of metanarrative that universalizes and totalizes every particular and different discourse and religious belief into sameness. In the final analysis, Asian irregular theology understands the mission of the triune God as a theologia viatorum in the quest for the freedom and mystery of God, who is always ahead of us. In this light an Asian theology of God’s narrative as mission is radically open to self-critique and self-renewal while appreciating religious outsiders as extraordinary way of God’s communication, being critical of the totalizing grand narrative of Christendom. The theology of the cross is an indispensable part of weaving God’s narrative into the public sphere that can be experienced in non-Christian poetic imagination of compassion and utopian desire. God’s narrative as mission inspires localized and diverse expressions of divine reality by transformatively acknowledging them as extraordinary, irregular, and transversal witnesses to God’s gracious story woven into the life of Jesus Christ in the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

CH A P T E R

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Intercultural Theology as a Prophetic Mission of God’s Narrative

The emergence of self-identified theologies of diverse times and places is the mark of a pluriform Christian theology within World Christianity. No single theological master monopolizes theological discourse, the interpretation of biblical narratives, or confessions. Intercultural theology demonstrates that the message of the Christian gospel assumes its own peculiarity and uniqueness in a specific context. In bearing witness to the subject matter of the Scripture, intercultural theology can take the form of a prophetic theology as it engages issues in the multireligious and multicultural life world and promotes the complete humanity of those on the margins. To the extent that a theology of God’s narrative entails a prophetic and public line and direction, intercultural theology has to articulate the particular and universal scope of God’s narrative in the multireligious life world surrounding many religions and cultures. Here, intercultural theology seeks to rearticulate and deepen the biblical narrative of justification, reconciliation, and the freedom of viva vox Evangelii, demonstrating a prophetic-public engagement in a localized, analogical-discursive perspective. Asian Christian theology, whether evangelical or liberal minded, is emerging from the Asian religious and cultural matrix and has been formed and developed in an ever-changing context. The Christian narrative of the glad tidings of God’s grace in Christ for all becomes foundational as this narrative is articulated in a particular universal horizon in diverse times and places. The dynamism of God’s narrative and its cultural assumption resist a cultural expression of the Christian narrative as a fait accompli. Theological endeavors are relativized in this light. Rather, an encounter of the subject matter of the Christian narrative with the horizon of other religions implies a dynamic and continuing process, rendering a cultural exchange more amenable and relevant to the interpretation of the Christian narrative in an intercultural reframing.1

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This chapter is an attempt to develop an intercultural theology as a prophetic mission of God’s narrative in dealing with the Trinity in an interreligious context along with an East Asian contribution to Christology and ecclesiology in dialog with ethical wisdom of filial piety. A cross-cultural configuration of such theological themes bears witness to a living voice of God that occurs in the multireligious life world. Here a mission of wordevent encourages the church to be humble, open, and self-renewing to God’s mysterious narrative in the world of religious outsiders. Trinitarian Mission in Face of the Multireligious Life World To what extent does the Christian theology of the Trinity become missional as it meshes with a “life horizon” of religious pluralism? In promotion of the Asian face of Christianity several Asian scholars have attempted to construct an Asian conceptualization of the Trinity with respect to spirituality, wisdom, and minjung in a life horizon of world religions. To understand the reality of religious pluralism it is helpful to begin with the assertion: “One may drink out of the same great rivers with others, but one need not use the same cup.” 2 In a similar fashion Kahlil Gibran writes: “Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.” Christian thinking in an Asian context is also challenged by the Buddhist aphorism: Do not look at the finger! If you do, you will miss the moon. Look at the moon through the finger! One of the most challenging aspects of the contemporary situation for theologians in Asia is plurality, religious, and otherwise. Given this complicated situation, a question arises: What is the place and the function of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Asian church and theology? Can this doctrine be missional when it is engaged in an interreligious dialog? Trinitarian theology in an Asian perspective is proposed by two creative theologians: Raimon Panikkar and Jung Young Lee. When considering an intercultural contribution to Trinitarian theology, we are interested in examining and exploring the intercultural dimension of Asian Trinitarian theology in an interreligious perspective, and finally proposing God’s mission as word-event in Trinitarian framework from the standpoint of Jesus sociobiography with those on the margin. Raimon Panikkar: Trinity and Hinduism Given the Asian quest for God’s mysterious mission in Trinitarian life, it is helpful to begin with Panikkar. Perhaps the most daring of Panikkar’s attempts, in view of his vision of Trinitarian theology, is to map a HinduBuddhist-Christian spirituality within the Christian understanding of God. This project first appeared in his early and ground-breaking book The Trinity and World Religions. Here, he imposes a Trinitarian structure

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on Hinduism and an advaitic (nondual) structure on Christianity. Both “Trinity” and “advaita” become alternative symbols for the “cosmotheandric” Mystery of God. As Panikkar says, “the Trinity may be considered as a junction where the authentic spiritual dimensions of all religions meet.” 3 Panikkar develops his so-called advaitic Trinitarianism in dialogue with the advaitic tradition of Hinduism. The very incommensurability of the two religions becomes a window, opening the whole of the Trinity so that each religion becomes an indispensable part in understanding God in perichoretic life. Panikkar argues that the Trinity is a symbolic metaphor for articulating cosmotheandrism, namely “that intimate and complete unity . . . between the divine and the human . . . which is the goal towards which everything here below tends.” 4 The cosmotheandric vision, which lies at the center of the Upanishads, is expressed well in the statement: “God is in all; all is in God.” 5 The term advaita is composed of the Sanskrit root dv, which means two, and the alpha privative, meaning “not.” Etymologically the term means “not two.” It means for Panikkar something that is radically relational, organic, and holistic. Taking the categories from the three classical spiritual paths of the Bhagavad-Gita, Panikkar explores the way of karma, the way of bhakti, and the way of jnana. Since karma means action in the Hindu contextprimarily the action of worship—Panikkar explores the spirituality of the worship of God through a divine name like Yahweh or Allah. He next describes the way of bhakti as a means of personal devotion. The way of devotion and love (bhaktimarga) is the personalist dimension of spirituality. In the third way, the path of jnana or knowledge is linked to advaitic nondifferentiation. In this intrareligious framework of the Trinity Panikkar identifies the Father of the Christian Trinity with the absolute Brahman of Hinduism and Tao in Taoism. The Father, as such, is the Transcendent and the Unnamable beyond every name. The focus in Panikkar’s Trinitarian language is the universality of cosmotheandric experience of divine reality, humanity, and world and the reality of the triangular consciousness of “I,” “Thou,” and “We.” These are mutually constitutive. No “I” is possible without the “We,” which in turn cannot be without the “I” and the “Thou.” The “I” can address the “Thou” only in the spirit of the “We.” Ultimate Reality consists of the network of relationships among the “I,” the “Thou,” and the “We.” The Son is Thou—the absolute Thou. It is only from the Son that we can know about the Father. About the Father himself—in himself—we can say nothing. In the Father the apophaticism (the kenosis or Buddhist self-emptying) of Being is real, radical, and total. That the Father begets the Son means that there is a total generation in which the Father gives himself totally to the Son. This is what Panikkar calls “the Cross of the Trinity” or the “integral immolation of God.” 6 This is Panikkar’s

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appropriation of the Christian concept of homoousios in an intrareligious reframing of the Trinity. Panikkar turns next to the Son, treating him primarily as a person, in a manner that correlates with the spirituality of personalism in the path of devotion or love. In this, Panikkar brings to light the personal property of the silence of the Father in polar complementarity to the Son as speech. “The God of theism, thus, is the Son; the God with whom we can speak, establish a dialogue, enter into communication.” 7 At this juncture Panikkar undermines the historical Jesus of Nazareth, but highlights Christ as the universal Logos who links the infinite and the finite. Christ as a mysterious mediator is present everywhere, especially in other religious traditions. Christ is called the Hindu Isvara, the Buddhist Tathagata, and even the Hebrew Yahweh, and the Muslim Allah. Here, unfortunately Panikkar violates and totalizes the Jewish, Islamic, and Buddhist religious experiences of the ultimate Source into his metaphysical principle of the universal Logos or Trinity. In his final stance Panikkar approaches the mystery of the Spirit through the concept of immanence. He gives credit to Hinduism for its special role in illuminating the mystery of the Spirit. As the Father empties himself into the Son, so the Son holds nothing back from the Father. It is the Spirit who makes the kenotic relation complete and consummated. “If the Father and the Son are not two, they are not one either: the Spirit both unites and distinguishes them.” 8 In this light Panikkar describes three aspects of the divinity and three corresponding forms of religious spirituality. Buddhism is the religion of the silence of God the Father since God expresses God’s self only through the Son and, in and of God’self has no word or expression. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are the religions of the revelation of the Son. Western culture is a culture of the Word or Logos, guided by the intellectual logos of the Greeks and Romans. However, the Orient has other modes of perception such as silence and the sense of immersion in unity. At issue for Panikkar is that Hinduism is a religion of the nondifferentiation of the Spirit. In correlating the Trinitarian differentiation of the Father, Son, and the Spirit with Buddhism, Judaism-Christianity-Islam, and Hinduism, Panikkar eradicates God’s activity of promissio and missio for the sake of harmonious coexistence among religions. Hence Panikkar obscures the identity of the Triune God in self-communication and interpretation through the revelation of Jesus Christ in the presence of the Holy Spirit. In the Christian view, the God of Israel is revealed in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit and the divine perichoresis is at the center of Trinitarian life rather than undergirding the perichoresis of world religions. Furthermore, Panikkar’s typological simplification of world religions (Buddhism as a religion of Father, Judaism and Islam as the religion of the Logos) has been highly criticized. He attempts to subsume and totalize different spiritualities of world religions into the single metanarrative of

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his principle of universal Logos or Trinity. His typology of Buddhism as a religion of silence of the Father results in an eradication and violation of the Buddhist principle of dependent co-origination and ethical compassion. Judaism and Islam are cut back to a religion of the Logos in order to serve Panikkar’s advaitic schematization. At any rate, by integrating and penetrating the mystery of the Christian Trinity through Buddhist and Hindu modes of experiencing silence and nondifferentiation, Panikkar has reached an advaitic Trinitarian structure that is called radical Trinity. This model of radical Trinity is structured to promote a breakthrough in interreligious or intrareligious dialog. Here, missio Dei is transformed into the Trinitarian mission to allow the perichoresis of world religions. The God of Israel is dethroned for the sake of cosmotheandrism. Missional life is a life of sharing the commonality of world religions, which implies a conversion to the religion of the other. Jung Young Lee: Trinity and Daoism Sharing Panikkar’s interest, yet moving in a different direction, Lee proposes an East Asian understanding of God in his interpretation of The Book of Changes (Yi jing)—a text widely revered in East Asian religious culture, especially in China, Japan, and South Korea. Lee develops a typology of theologies as the context for his theological program. The three main options in Christian theology today are the theology of the absolute, process theology, and the theology of change. The theology of the absolute is, according to Lee, the dominant form of Western theology. In this theological framework, God is understood by way of the static concept of being (for instance, “the unmoved mover,” which has been inherited from Greek philosophy). Process theology is, for Lee, a transitional type of theology from God’s substance to God’s change. It stands midway between the theology of the absolute and Lee’s own project of a theology of change. Process theology has correctly broken with the dominant western view of God as static, unchanging, eternal, and impassible. Its worldview is compatible with both western and eastern thought. However, process theology presupposes a linear view of time whereas Lee’s Asian view of time is cyclical. Lee offers the theology of change as a valid alternative to the theology of the absolute and process theology. Most East Asian philosophies of religion could be called commentaries on the Book of Changes (Yi jing), just as western philosophies could be called footnotes to Plato. The Book of Changes is the classic literature exploring change in a cosmo-anthropological sense. It states that change is the fundamental characteristic of the reality of life. This change is interpreted through two complementary principles: yin and yang. Yin and yang are the two primordial forces that pervade all of reality. As Lee argues, “There is the Absolute that produced the two forms, yin and yang; and the yin and yang between them produced all things . . . One yin and one

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yang constituted what is called Dao.” 9 Everything in the world can be categorized into yin and yang. Yin and yang are manifestations of one essence—change. If change characterizes all of reality, then God is best understood as the Change itself. Change itself is ultimately beyond human comprehension, but it can be known in its concrete, relative manifestations through an interplay between yin and yang. At issue for Lee is to bring forth “in” as the inner connecting principle to develop an Asian Trinitarian hermeneutic. The “in” principle refers to the mutual inclusiveness of the yinyang movement. As he stresses, “yin-yang symbolic thinking, which is also ‘both/and’ thinking, is none other than one (unity) in three (diversity) as well as three (diversity) in one (unity).” 10 Because of this “in” as the inner connecting principle, the reciprocal relation between yin and yang becomes Trinitarian in character. As long as two are in One (the great circle), one is in three. Therefore, “both/and” thinking in terms of the “in” principle of mutual inclusiveness becomes the core concept for Lee in approaching the Trinity in a different way than Tertullian’s formula—una substantia, tres personae—or the Cappadocians’ formula—mia ousia, treis hypostaseis.11 In constructing his inductive approach to the Trinity, Lee orders the Trinity as Son-Spirit-Father. By beginning with God the Son he sees “incarnation as a fulfillment of the Trinitarian process in creation.” 12 In equating the Word or Logos with Dao he articulates the ineffable nature of Dao in line with the Dao-de-jing, “The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao (Ch. 1).” The Logos is also the power of creativity, just as is the Dao. In regard to Christ’s kenosis (Phil 2:5–9). Lee asserts that the Dao is empty but inexhaustible, whereby fullness and emptiness always coexist. The Word as the Dao is also known as change. This act is ceaseless in terms of an emptying and fulfilling process.13 However, Lee eliminates the dimension of the Father by identifying the Son as the Dao. Thus, the death of Jesus on the cross is totally identical with the death of the Father and the Spirit. That is, the death of the Trinitarian God. The inseparability and mutual inclusiveness of the yin-yang dialectic is not adequate to distinguish and characterize the Trinitarian God in terms of divine Persons.14 Rather, Lee’s logic of yinyang mutual inclusiveness takes this direction in order to apply the Greek concept of homoousios to the Father’s and Spirit’s death on the cross. Lee does this in order to discard the Trinitarian concept of relation of origin (Begetter, begotten, and proceeding). As he argues, “The centrality of the Father is marginalized through the Spirit and is recentered in the Son. Just as the cell divides itself to create a new cell, recentering is needed in the process of creativity and change.” 15 Therefore, the relations of origin in the Trinity, or the role of appropriation (Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier) can always be changeable. He understands the Spirit as the earth mother or qi, which is the Daoist concept of the vital energy or material principle; comparable to ruach in

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Hebrew, or pneuma in Greek. This perspective reinvigorates Lee to reconstruct a “multi-logical” Trinitarian theology because the Spirit is truly immanent and inclusive of all things in the cosmos. Lee’s model of a yin-yang Trinitarian theology is based on triadic thinking. Change as the Ultimate Reality is the foundation of all existence underlying the yin-yang process. Based on Change, Lee advocates for “paterque” (the Son proceeding from the Father and the Spirit), “filioque” (the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son), or “spiritusque” (The Father proceeding from the Son and the Spirit) in the innertrinitarian relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit.16 He demonstrates an extreme form of social, tripersonal doctrine of the Trinity since for him perichoresis still “presupposes the idea of person as individual, even if person is dynamically conceived as an individualin-relation.” 17 Nevertheless, Lee’s interpretation of Dao in the interplay between yin and yang violates the freedom and mystery of Dao over and against yin and yang in an attempt to totalize the unique place of Dao into a Christian concept of homoousious. Lee’s reframing of the Trinity from a Daoist perspective demonstrates a concept of Christianity in Buddhism, Buddhism in Confucianism, and Confucianism in Daoism. Mission becomes an attempt to find one’s religious identity in the face of other religions rather than communicating the glad tidings of God’s grace in Christ for all. Rather for Lee missio Dei, seen in light of the “in” principle, is common witness of religions to the commonality of God’s universal work in all different religions. Masao Abe: Trinity and Buddhism It is instructive to review Masao Abe’s critical conversation with Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of the Trinity. In the Buddhist-Christian dialog, Abe finds an affinity between Moltmann’s concept of kenosis and the Buddhist principle of self-emptiness (Sunyata). According to Moltmann, “the revolution in the concept of God,” which is manifested by the crucified Christ, should be properly articulated in a Trinitarian way.18 The death of Jesus is a Trinitarian event among the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Therefore, the Trinitarian concept of the “crucified God” prevents the Christian faith from falling into the trap of faith in Christian monotheism. Regarding this statement, Abe begins his critique of Moltmann, calling into question Moltmann’s statement that “God is dead on the cross and yet is not dead.” 19 To solve this paradox of God’s death—the Father and the Spirit did not die and still participated somehow in the Son’s death—Abe introduces the Buddhist concept of self-emptiness (Sunyata) as Zero. Abe questions whether ‘the unity of three persons in one God or Godhead’ would presuppose a fourth being. In order to overcome this tendency, Abe argues that “the one God in the Trinity must be the great Zero that is free even from the oneness as distinguished from the threeness.” 20 If the one

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God is understood as nonsubstantial Zero, or Nichts, the divine essence is dynamically self-manifesting, and dialectically relational, so that we can necessarily speak of Father, Son, and Spirit. In light of the Buddhist concept of the great Zero (self-emptiness) “the unity and the Trinity of God are fully and harmoniously realized without conf lict.” 21 In a manner similar to Panikkar and Lee, Abe’s proposal of Zero Trinity inevitably leads to the total kenosis of the Father into the Son’s death. Abe proposes the concept of the Zero as Nichts or Ungrund which is similar to the analogies of the Christian mystic tradition (such as Meister Ekhart). The sonship of Jesus is ultimately rooted in Nichts or Ungrund as “the godhead in the unity of three persons in one God.” 22 A Buddhist dialectic is of a nondual character that finds its echo in Ekhart’s Christian theology of via negativa. Abe’s Zero Trinity does not stand far from Ekhart’s concept of “godhead above god.” Be that as it may, Abe’s interpretation of self-emptiness as absolute nothingness contradicts the socially engaged Buddhist interpretation of selfemptiness as an ethical principle, as seen within the Mahayana traditions in China and South Korea. The Trinitarian God, in Abe’s sense, does not concern God’s people in a sociohistorical realm, and Jesus Christ remains one historical manifestation among others. A challenge to the ethical vulnerability of Asian Trinitarian metaphysics comes from the irregular concept of Jesus’ sociobiography with ochlos-minjung. The Trinitarian metaphor of the “Father begetting the Son in the womb of the Spirit” is taken seriously to articulate the Trinitarian theology of the cross in Jesus’ sociobiographical accompaniment with public sinners and tax collectors. This perspective is developed in an Asian irregular approach to the Trinity in light of the irregularity of God’s “saying” over the “said.” Trinitarian Mission in Jesus’ Sociobiography Trinitarian mission of word-event, as seen in light of Jesus’ sociobiography, is a Christian understanding of the God of Israel in self-communication through the Torah, Christ, and people of other faiths in the presence of the Spirit. Starting out from the God of Israel in self-communication, a Trinitarian understanding of word-event has to do with Christ’s mission for ochlos. According to Hebrews 1:1, “God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets.” The Word of God in Jesus Christ cannot be properly understood apart from God’s act of speech through all ages, creating a plural horizon of word effects. God’s “saying” is not merely confined to the ecclesial sphere. Rather, it creates a horizon of embracing pluralistic forms of human language in reference to mission of God’s narrative. God in self comes to us, as the subject of the speaking in covenant with Israel, as the incarnational presence in Jesus Christ, and as the God of all in the universal outpouring of the Spirit upon all f lesh. God’s speech

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event in Trinitarian communication must not be relativized for the sake of a dualistic-agnostic self-centrism, or Hindu cosmotheandric polytheism. Rather, Trinitarian thinking offers a hermeneutical insight that transcends a theory of human projection and challenges the postulation of a myth of religious pluralism. Given the dynamic quality of God’s “saying,” there is an irregular side of God’s word-event that may come to us through face of the religious outsiders. This aspect shapes and characterizes an Asian analogical and discursive perspective on God as the Trinity who speaks in promise, reconciliation, and freedom to all of us. In the context of the Hebrew Bible, a universal dimension of God’s narrative is seen in God’s covenant with Noah prior to the covenant with Abraham. This covenant includes humanity, living creatures, and the rhythm and movement of nature. Seen in the context of the Greek Bible, God becomes the personal object to be known to the Spirit who explores and searches the depths of God (1 Cor 2:10). The Spirit is the Spirit of God’s self-knowledge because the Spirit is from God (1 Cor 2:12). If God is not communicated to us by the Spirit, God remains closed and unknown to us. The unknown God (Acts 17:23) cannot be the subject matter of human knowledge of, or Christian faith in, the triune God. The Spirit, who stands in reference to the depths and archaic ground of God, is the God who questions, explores, and illuminates God. No one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God (1 Cor 2:11). This Spirit, as life giver, is the Spirit for all living creatures rather than a spirit monopolized by the church. The Spirit, who is deeply and mysteriously bound up with God, is the Spirit of love in protest against death. The Spirit, as the life-giving Spirit, puts to death the deeds of the body (Rom 8:13). Jesus affirms the life-giving Sprit by reading from the prophet Isaiah that the Spirit is the Spirit of anointing the prophet, bringing good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, letting the oppressed go free, and proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4: 18–19, 21). These ochloi (the poor and the marginalized) were excluded at Jesus’ time by the religious authorities. Jesus, the partisan of the marginalized, fulfilled the Spirit of embrace, emancipation, and protest against the culture of death. As the prophet Isaiah proclaims (Isa. 42:1–3), “I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles . . . He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick until he brings justice to victory. And in his name the Gentiles will hope” (Matt 12:18). Jesus’ sociobiographical accompaniment with ochlos-minjung becomes foundational for an Asian irregular deliberation of the Trinity. God may speak to the church through the ugly face of minjung in an irregular, unexpected, and ominous way. God’s mission as word-event is alive in the minjung experience of han (the collective and suppressed feeling of victims) in their oppressed discourse, and marginalized life context. Mission of word-event aims to promote their full humanity.

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Seen in the perspective of the immanent Trinity, the Son as the Word of God is connected with the concept of eternal begetting (generation) through the Father. The metaphor of eternal generation of the eternal Word or Son implies that God speaks to humanity anew in Jesus and through Jesus. Jesus Christ is what God speaks to us in an ongoing and always new way. This refers to the prophetic side of a Trinitarian theology of mission in the public sphere. Jesus Christ as vere deus and vere homo becomes possible without displacing the transcendence and freedom of God or his relationship with Israel and his people. Jesus Christ as truly divine and truly human is the way of God’s self-communication concerning God’s dynamic event of eternal and historical generation (Matt 1) as well as eschatological consummation of the world. From the perspective of philosophical Daoism Dao can be understood as the Way that gives and enables all other ways. This refers to the archaic source and root that empowers a human being to think and meditate. The mystery and transcendence of God’s speech analogically conceals itself in the mystery of Dao, so that God’s speech can be heard analogically in the dynamic quality of Dao’s self-communication in diverse streams and different discourses. An irregular analogical approach to Trinitarian theology configures a Trinitarian theology of the cross from the standpoint of grassroots marginality in dialoge with the religious life horizon of East Asian religions, especially Buddhism and philosophical Daoism as stated in Dao-de-jing regarding the freedom of Dao. If Christology is rooted in Jesus’ suffering embrace of others, then the concept of suffering can be extended more broadly. The Buddhist concept of suffering (dukkha) better denotes the cosmic level of suffering by all sentient creatures beyond the anthropological meaning of suffering. There is no single English word for the word dukkha (du: bad, low; kha: empty, hollow). Chained into the circle of birth and death in the world of becoming (Sanskrit: Samsara), all sentient living creatures suffer from a fundamental alienation and an ontological isolation from the Ultimate.23 Dao manifests itself as alētheia in the act of thoughtful and mysterious speech. Dao, seen in the dynamic quality of word-event comes to us as language, heeding the unspoken. Language, which speaks by discourse, is grounded in primordial silence. “Authentic silence is possible only in genuine discourse.” 24 Silence as such is grounded in “out of speech” that is an act of listening that corresponds to speech. Dao’s discourse and the Buddhist concept of dukkha sharpen an Asian irregular Trinity in an analogical and discursive configuration. Mission of God’s narrative becomes a Christian witness to God’s self-communication in Christ and the Spirit beyond any foundational and ecclesial barrier. In light of God’s final coming, God is a becoming and transforming reality in the coming of God’s Future. The concept of the immanent Trinity is not fully justified in a biblical sense. Nevertheless, the teaching of the immanent Trinity finds its meaning and validity in the ground words generatio, spiratio, and processio in the metaphor of God’s begetting

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the Son in the presence of the Spirit. The immanent Trinity has a priority vis-à-vis the economic Trinity in analogical and eschatological openness. The immanent Trinity is an ideologically critical function of the human projection on reducing God to human religious experience. At this juncture there is an eschatological reserve against the total identification of God in self with God for us. Against Rahner and Moltmann,25 this understanding of God in self has an eschatological direction in view of the fact that “God will be what will be” and “God will be all in all.” God for us bears witness to God in se in an eschatologically open-ended movement of God’s Word in action and becoming in light of God’s coming. A missiology of word-event in Trinitarian profile is characterized by God’s self-communication that establishes reconciliation and peace in Christ with the people of the world. It is essential in Trinitarian mission of God’s narrative to attend to the uncomfortable and even ominous voice of God’s “saying” through the face of religious outsiders. The transversal irregularity of God’s word-event through Trinitarian communication can become a driving force for Christian openness toward the reality of religious pluralism and ethical responsibility in the face of others. When the free and extraordinary communications of the triune God are upheld, religious outsiders can be seen to analogically and correspondingly bear witness to God’s relationship with us through the provocative irregularity of God’s speech event in reconciled world and in expectation of the final consummation of the world. In confessing the triune God, we proclaim our belief in the God who shares the Son’s way and who participates in his life as a victim on the cross through the mysterious presence of the Spirit. God’s being shares and manifests itself in the life of the Son with his ochlos under the guidance of the Spirit. God’s future has already begun and has broken into the life, death, and resurrection of the Son who was a historical Jew accompanying the massa perditionis who are burdened by the violence and injustice of the powerful in universal history. Mission of word-event accentuates Trinitarian action in accompaniment with the innocent victim and the marginalized. Asian Theological Contribution to Jesus Christ An Asian theological contribution in our global context lies in bringing about an intercultural interpretation and insight as it encounters the Christian narrative and the Western theological system. If intercultural theology relates to the dynamism of God’ word-event that comes through religious outsiders, Asian intercultural (or inculturation) theology marks its uniqueness through a critical ref lection and renewal of Western theological thought in light of the mission of word-event. Hence, this intercultural theology proposes a hermeneutic of audacity and difference in the presence of religious others. Beginning with the indigenous and

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religious-cultural assumptions rooted in an Asian context, Asian intercultural theology has emerged as a dialog partner and challenge to Western theology. Here Asian Christology assumes a different orientation and fashion as it accentuates an irregular and different side of Jesus Christ. We shall be concerned with introducing several models of Asian Christology with emphasis on contextualization and liberation. Luther’s theology of theologia crucis is rerooted in Japanese cultural matrix in a direction of theology of pain (tsurasa). Bonhoeffer’s theology is appreciated and radicalized in minjung theological development toward a theology of Jesus’ sociobiography with the marginalized and the innocent victim in the public sphere. Asian theology of liberation (Pieris) and political theology of the third eye (C.S. Song) attempt to present themselves as specifically Asian configurations by complementing the biblical narrative with Asian people’s religious (especially Buddhist) experience of liberation (according to Pieris) or transposing it into Asian stories of ordiniary people (according to Song). An irregular Christology is constructed in analogical-discursive profile emphasizing the dynamism of word-event with respect to sociopolitical reality of those on the underside of history as well as irregular horizon of God’s narrative woven into lifeworld of East Asian religions. Kazoh Kitamori: A Japanese Theology of Tsurasa The contextualization of Luther’s thought in Asia began with Kitamori’s seminal book The Theology of The Pain of God (1946).26 Kitamori (1916– 1998) was a Lutheran theologian and taught systematic theology at Tokyo Union Theological Seminary. On the basis of Luther’s insight into God’s suffering, Kitamori, during the war and post–Hiroshima, appropriated Japanese cultural terms such as tsurasa in order to actualize a theology of the cross from a Japanese cultural perspective. Kitamori calls into question the Greek theological doctrine of divine apathy by articulating the pain of God. Utilizing Luther’s metaphor of Christ’s death against death” on the cross, Kitamori’s Japanese theology is characterized by “pain against pain.” Recognizing that Luther understands Golgotha as a place of “God fighting with God,” Kitamori develops a notion of “God in pain” in the sense that God embraces those who do not deserve to be embraced. Therefore, Kitamori argues that God in pain or God with the wounded heart represents an image of the sacrificial death of Christ.27 From this perspective Kitamori is critical of the Barthian dialectical theology that was prevalent in Japan. Kitamori’s principle—embracing the nonembraceable, or forgiving the unforgivable—becomes the driving force for characterizing the unique aspect of God’s pain.28 Kitamori takes pain seriously as essential to God’s experience of the world and God’s being in his reading of Luther’s statement; “the absolute necessity for the sacrifice of the Son is grounded in God himself.” 29 A

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theologia crucis becomes possible when the essence of God can be comprehended as the pain of God, as seen only from the word of the cross. 30 Here Kitamori gives priority to Luther’s concept of Deus absconditus. Inf luenced by the modern Luther Renaissance (represented by Karl Holl and Seeberg), Kitamori affirms that the hidden God is “the fundamental principle of Luther’s theology.” 31 Out of this arises all the rest of Luther’s thought. According to Kitamori the hidden God was from the beginning enmeshed with God in pain. Grounded in this insight, he deepens Luther’s conclusion of “an absolute, interdivinely grounded necessity of the delivering up of the Son” (my own translation: Eine absolute, innergöttliche begründete Notwendigkeit der Dahingabe des Sohnes).32 God’s eternal decision to deliver up the Son for the world becomes a hermeneutical principle that leads to the notion of the analogy of pain. With this notion in mind, Kitamori critically engages the Catholic concept of an analogy of being (analogia entis), as well as the Barthian concept of an analogy of faith (analogia fidei). According to the Catholic teaching of analogy, a natural way to come to God exists through a general, ontological human capacity (analogia entis). This lessens the importance of the special revelation of Jesus Christ. Against Catholic teaching, however, Barth argues that God can be known only through the revelation of Jesus Christ. Emphasizing special revelation, Barth utilizes the term analogia fidei in Rom. 12:6 (analogia tes pisteos), because faith brings us into a right relationship between God’s pain and human pain. However, Kitamori regards the Catholic analogia entis as well as Barth’s analogia fidei as inadequate to express the relationship between God’s pain and human pain. Hence, Kitamori’s theology of the cross takes the direction of analogy in light of pain, that is, analogia doloris.33 In his analogical imagination of God’s pain, Kitamori appropriates the Japanese word tsurasa, related to the spirit of Japanese tragedy. For Kitamori tsurasa becomes a metaphor for aptly expressing the wounded heart of God, who loves the unlovable through the sacrifice of Christ.34 The mystery of the hidden God in pain is discernible in God’s eternal decision to deliver up and sacrifice God’s Son. The redemptive suffering of God is born only in silence. Silence in God’s mystery and tsurasa are the guiding catalysts for the features of Kitamori’s theology of the cross from a Japanese perspective. As Kosuke Koyama has shown, “embracing and enduring tsurasa becomes an intercultural correspondence to Luther’s concept of ‘God fighting with God.’ ” 35 It is helpful to mention the significance of indigenization in Kitamori’s work. In appreciating Kitamori’s work, Koyama, a Japanese theologian and former student of Kitamori, contends that theological rerooting in an Asian context is a process of rerooting Western theological thought and ideas. Kitamori finds the concept of God-in-pain to be a powerful agent in conceptualizing tsurasa that can reroot the Christian narrative of a theology of the cross in the Japanese cultural mindset. Tsurasa means feeling pain in one’s deep personal life for the sake of others (vicarious suffering).

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It follows that through suffering for the sake of another, human beings analogically and actually participate in the one who suffered on the cross. Kitamori’s concept of an analogy of suffering becomes a key concept in the theological rerooting of a Reformation theology of the cross that is indigenized and inculturated in Japanese cultural soil.36 Along these lines, Shusaku Endo has also made a unique contribution toward a theological rerooting. Endo, a Catholic novelist, depicts the anguish of faith and the mercy of God. His literary vision includes a desire for Christianity to radically adapt itself so that it can take root in the swamp of Japan. In his novel Silence he deals with the persecution of Christians in Japanese history. Christian mission in Japan began with the arrival of Francis Xavier in the year 1549. By 1579 the Christian religious community was f lourishing. However, at this time the Japanese government began to purge all excessive foreign inf luence from the country. Finally, in 1614 an edict of expulsion was promulgated; this was the deathblow to western missionaries and Japanese Christians. This period of persecution eradicated Christianity down to its roots; Christians apostatized after long and terrible torture and complied with the order to trample on the sacred image of Jesus Christ.37 At the end of Endo’s Silence, even the Catholic priest tramples on the ugly face of Christ who had been trampled by so many feet ( fumie). Endo writes: “The Christ in bronze speaks to the priest: ‘Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.’ ” 38 Endo’ Silence takes place in the context of the Japanese persecution of the Christian religion. It poses a new perspective on theodicy in connection with the one who is trampled on the cross. According to Endo, Japan is a swamp that transforms the Western symbol of the crucifix into the symbol of the identification of Christ with those who apostatized.39 The tree of Hellenized Christianity cannot be pulled out of Europe and planted in the swamp of Japan without reservation. Instead, the Christian narrative must be grafted so as to grasp the heart of the Japanese people who have been nourished in a completely different cultural and religious tradition. Kitamori’s indigenous concept of tsurasa and Endo’s literary insight into God’s silence transform the Reformation theology of the cross into a Japanese theology of God’s pain in recognition of human failure and even apostasy. Jesus’ Sociobiography with Minjung In the East Asian context—especially among liberal minded theologians, church leaders, and lay people—Jesus Christ is understood as the representative of the poor and the one who recognizes religious outsiders. Emancipation and inculturation become the main issues in constructing an East Asian theology that attempts to rearticulate the gospel narrative of Jesus Christ

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regarding a poverty-stricken reality and the life horizon of world religions. A distinguishing feature of Asian contextual or inculturational theology is its emphasis on overwhelming poverty and multifaceted religiousness.40 Silence as a form of theologia crucis from a Japanese perspective faces a serious challenge from the minjung theological standpoint of South Korea. Minjung means the mixed crowd of the poor in the Christian community and the non-Christian world. Minjung theology sets its agenda by listening to the outcry of those who are alienated, oppressed, and marginalized. From a minjung theological view, Kitamori completely avoids the real victims of WWII in Japan. These victims were the Chinese and Korean minjung who suffered Japanese colonization during the war. During the Japanese War of Aggression against China, Japanese troops committed a series of atrocities in Nanjing. The brutal slaughter of innocent people as well as rape and destruction of the city took place during six weeks between December 1937 and January 1938. The massacre left 300,000 victims. The ancient and cultural capital city experienced unprecedented catastrophe, and is indelibly imprinted by this brutal and horrible page in human history. A theology of the cross in this context becomes a theology of innocent victims rather than accommodating itself to the Japanese cultural theology of God’s pain. Innocent victims set the agenda for the Christian church in an Asian context that suffered under colonialism. Kitamori’s theology of God’s pain remains hypocritical when disengaged from Japanese repentance regarding the oppression and genocide of their neighbors. Here, minjung theology presents itself as a theology of the innocent victim. Consequently, in this regard, Endo’s imagination of the trampled Christ is transformed into the image of the Christ in accompaniment with the trampled people—minjung. Departing from the 1970s political reality of military dictatorship in South Korea, Asian minjung theology began to reframe Jesus’ life and movement in view of his sociobiographical solidarity with ochlos-minjung. Here, special attention is given to the hermeneutical retrieval of Mark’s theological deliberation on Jesus and ochlos in the context of Galilee. In this theological development, Ahn Byung-mu, one of pioneers of minjung theology, appreciates and radicalizes Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s insight into theologia crucis from the perspective of the underside of history. By critically developing some important insights of Asian minjung theology, minjung theologians of the second generation actualize and deepen an Asian reframing of the irregularity of word-event in an analogical, discursive fashion. Asian irregular theologians take a step further; expanding the horizon of Jesus’ sociobiography from the perspective of a Jewish ochlos contour while critically examining the socioeconomic life setting within the confines of Pharisaic Judaism. Here, Jesus, a Jew born of Mary, a poor Jewish maiden, comes into view, while Jesus’ mission of God’s reign is accentuated in connection to the praxis of discipleship in solidarity with the poor. Jesus is proposed as a new interpreter of the Torah, bringing life and emancipation.

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In Mark’s view ochlos implies the inhabitants of Palestine: the Jews and then Christians and Gentiles who were homeless and without rights after the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70. His assumption is that Mark underscores the message of Jesus’ movement with regard to the socioeconomic reality of the poor in the post–Judean war situation.41 Nero’s General Vespasian, aided by his son Titus, took Galilee, Perea, and parts of Judea in 68. After the death of Nero in 68, Titus, a general among the forces in Egypt, took Jerusalem in July of 70 and utterly destroyed the temple. In the aftermath there was no more temple, no high priest, ruling priests, Sadducees, sacrifices, or Essenes. Palestine fell completely under Roman military rule. After the war, the heads of the Pharisees resettled in Jamnia, Vespasian’s estate that was under Roman control. Their leader Johanan ben Zakkai had escaped Jerusalem in a box during the height of the Roman siege. Under the leadership of Johanan the Pharisees organized the school and court that were the seed of rabbinic Judaism.42 In order to understand the significance of this social-material condition for the construction of Mark’s Gospel, it is important to examine the gospel narrative of Jesus’ mission in reference to the situation after the destruction of the temple. The first Judean war is described as the basic event that led to the collection of many of the writings that made up the Greek Bible—especially the synoptic gospels. The social location of Jesus’ mission within the confines of Pharisaic Judaism is examined in light of form-critical exegesis. The form-critical method is an exegesis which has to do with social history. In this light, Jesus appears as one in partisanship with the ochlos-minjung. From the very beginning of his gospel narrative, Mark talks about the crowd: the many people gathered around Jesus with an emphasis on their social material condition in Galilee. This crowd forms the nameless and voiceless background for Jesus’ mission as conversely Jesus’ mission comes into view for the sake of ochlos. In Mark 1:22 they—the crowd—are first mentioned. The word ochlos occurs thirty-six times in this gospel. Mark’s construction of Jesus’ ministry in relationship to the “crowd” is articulated with episodes between Jesus and the disabled (2:1ff; 10: 45ff.), the ritually unclean (1:45ff; 5:25ff.), and the socially marginalized (2:25ff; 7:24ff.)—including women and children (10:1ff.). In the house of Simon the leper at Bethany Jesus teaches that one woman’s compassionate and symbolic act toward Jesus’ burial outweighs all the pretensions of his disciples. In every act of the proclamation of the Gospel “what she has done will be told in remembrance of her” (14:9f ). In Mark’s Gospel narrative ochlos is a description of people without religious identity and without ethnic coherence unlike laos or goyim. The word ochlos, which Mark uses to describe their relationship with Jesus, includes tax collectors and public sinners—those excluded from Jewish

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society. They are people off the land (ha’aretz), without property.43 At issue in Ahn’s hermeneutical imagination is an understanding of amha’aretz—or those who belong to these despised occupations. In the first and second century the Pharisees disqualified nonpharisaic Jews as amha’aretz. In the first century the Pharisees were a minority but they saw the majority as amha’aretz. People who lived in poverty were not capable of studying the Torah and were thus despised as amha’aretz. Jesus himself was seen as a representative of the amha’aretz in the eyes of the Pharisees.44 People who were not economically in a position to study and keep the Law of Israel were despised by the Pharisees as massa perditionis (the multitude of the lost). But Jesus knew that he was not sent to call the righteous, but sinners (Mark 2:17). Jesus’ table fellowship took place among these people. His blood, the cup of the new covenant, was shed for many, ochloi (Mark 14:24). At Easter, Jesus appeared to the poor women in Jerusalem and the disciples in Galilee (Mark 16:7). Tax collectors belonged to the rabble excluded by the Jewish establishment. The ochlos cannot be regarded as a political power bloc. Rather, they are the alienated, dispossessed, and powerless. Jesus has a preferential option for the ochlos, proclaiming to them the kingdom of God. Jesus passively responds to their messianic expectation and stands with the ochlos-minjung.45 Jesus’ passivity implies his identification as one of them, because ochlosminjung are accepted unconditionally into Yahweh’s grace (Lev 25: 55). Jesus’ passive identification with the minjung implies an ideology that is critical of the elite’s representation of minjung or his/her romanticization of it. As one of the ochlos-minjung, Jesus assumes their agony, suffering, and fate into his own life.46 The Jesus who comes out of Israel becomes the Messiah of the ochlos in a passive sense rather than wanting to be recognized as the Messiah of Israel in an active, pro-revolutionary sense. John the Baptist witnesses to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This witness needs to be analogically read in light of those who are burdened and victimized by the sin of the powerful in the world. When we sing, ‘Lamb of God who takes away the Sin of the world’ ( John 1: 29), we are realistically reminded of the vicarious and representative suffering of the servant of God in accompaniment with the ochlos-minjung in today’s context. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the Minjung Theological Development Bonhoeffer left an indelible impression on the development of minjung theology, encouraging Ahn to take into account the ungodly and the poor as a theological locus, to learn from the underside of history in light of those who suffer, and to articulate Jesus’ embrace of others. Minjung theologians appreciate Bonhoeffer as a pioneer of solidarity Christology which represents “the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled—in short . . . those who suffer” outside the walls of the Christian church.47

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On the basis of the Gospel and in light of Christ, Bonhoeffer advocates that the godlessness of the world is full of promise, even despite its critical stance toward religion and the church. In fact, the godlessness of the world is closer to Christ than the hopeless godlessness disguised in religious and Christian clothing.48 This ref lection became more explicit in Bonhoeffer’s prison statement: “The world that has come of age is more godless, and perhaps for that very reason nearer to God, than the world before its coming of age.” 49 Therefore, the church’s service for the world consists in being there for others as Jesus is there for others. “The church is the church only when it exists for others.” 50 Bonhoeffer argues that Jesus Christ supports those who suffer for the sake of a righteous cause, even if this cause has little to do with the confession of Christ’s name.51 His nonreligious interpretation critiques an excessive attachment to the power of God in the world. In such an approach God would become the deus ex machina. In some ancient Greek dramas an unsolvable crisis is solved by the intervention of a god who is often brought on stage by an elaborate piece of equipment. This god from a machine is the literal translation of deus ex machina. In contrast, Bonhoeffer’s fundamental thesis reads: Only the suffering God can help. The development toward the world’s coming of age has done away with a false conception of God. It opens up a way of seeing the God of the Bible, who wins power and space in the world by God’s weakness.52 The biblical God calls us to the recognition of human maturity and autonomy. The God before whom we stand is the One who does not need our working hypothesis of god. “There is no God who ‘is there’ ”.53 God allows God’s self to be driven out of the world onto the cross. Therefore, “we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur” (as if there is no God).54 Bonhoeffer’s theologia crucis assumes a religionless and atheistic form and shows the remarkable solidarity of Jesus with the working class.55 For Bonhoeffer, Jesus’ solidarity with the working class challenges a religious encapsulation of God for bourgeois interest. What is at stake is a protest of bourgeois self-satisfaction, or “convenient reversal of the Gospel.” 56 Bonhoeffer’s hermeneutical view from below, that is, “from the perspective of those who suffer,” 57 inspired the theological imagination of Ahn Byung-mu to such an extent that he took issue with Western Christology in terms of Jesus’ unity with the ochlos. Bonhoeffer’s solidarity Christology inspires Ahn to grapple with the presence of Christ in the worker’s world—on the factory f loor. Ahn thus challenges any attempt to accommodate or identify Christ with the religious mentality of bourgeois society and church.58 The authentic meaning of God’s transcendence must be found in God in human form,—the man for others. That is to say, “the Crucified, the man who lives out of the transcendent.” 59 Ahn Byung-mu quoted Bonhoeffer’s insight approvingly in order to expand Jesus’ existence for others toward the life of the oppressed and the poor.60 Inspired by Bonhoeffer’s statement that “the transcendental does not consist of infinite and unattainable

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tasks, but the neighbor who is within reach in any given situation,” 61 Ahn relates his own experience of imprisonment to Bonhoeffer’s confession. God is transcendent by being present in our lives. As Ahn continues, We, the Christians and non-Christians in South-Korea, live like Bonhoeffer at his time in the same situation. We experience suffering in hopethat is directed toward the future. Thereby the door is open for the “transcendent.” As Bonhoeffer states, we suffer without God, but we live before God without knowing.62 Ahn reads the third article of the “Barmen Theological Declaration” from his minjung perspective.63 The first Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church met in Barmen from May 29–31, 1934. Here representatives from all the German Confessional Churches came together to confess the Lord of the one, holy, and apostolic Church. The first article reads: “Jesus Christ, as he is testified to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God, which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.” 64 In connection to the first article, the third article expresses an ecclesial dimension of Jesus Christ based on Eph.4:15 “Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body is joined and knit together.” The Christian Church is the community of brothers and sisters in which Jesus Christ is present, acting as Lord in word and sacrament by the Holy Spirit. As the church of pardoned sinners, in the midst of a sinful world, it has to witness by its faith and obedience, its message and order, that it is his alone, that it lives and desires to live only by his consolation and by his orders, in expectation of his coming. We reject the false doctrine that the Church is permitted to form its own message or its order according to its own desire or according to prevailing philosophical or political convictions. Viewing the third article from a Korean context, Ahn states that the unity of the church must be preserved in communion with the body of Christ. Ahn says this, realizing that unity is inevitable, especially for those who live in a situation of crisis. The community in Ephesus was small and insignificant for a community during this time. The Caesar cult of the Roman Empire was an ominous realty for the Christian community. The Caesar cult exalted the Roman emperor to be kyrios. In the early church, faith was connected with this audacious confession, to the point of risking one’s life. Therefore, Christ is the one “who is the head . . . from whom the whole body is joined and knit together.” This statement should be understood as an outcry against persecution coming out of the concrete reality of the ancient church, rather than as a doctrine.65 In his exegetical deliberation on Ephesians 4:15 Ahn states

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that this biblical statement finds its justification in the struggle for human rights. As Ahn states, “We Christian professors have at the time renewed the spirit of the Barmen Declaration and accepted it for our direction. We could not copy it simply, but had to formulate our faith and conviction anew with regard to our specific situation.” 66 However, minjung theology does not simply copy or implant the ideas of the Confessing Church of Germany, but takes seriously the political and cultural situation of Korea by confessing the Word of Christ as the political event in a particular and different situation and society. In the midst of political oppression and economic exploitation, Ahn states that “encounters with a present Christ is our deepest desire!” 67 Jesus’ acts as the Lord refers to the present Christ who suffers together with today’s Lazarus-minjung in the midst of political dictatorship and socioeconomic injustice—namely “in the midst of the sinful world.” Here, Ahn strives to recognize a theological locus in today’s Lazarus-minjung “in expectation of his coming;” in other words, in the hope of Christ’s reign with his people on earth. Minjung Christology finds eschatological meaning in the expectation of Jesus’ coming that takes place in our midst. This eschatology in a social existential contour shapes the line and direction of the minjung struggle with respect to the democratic social movement, human rights, and social justice. Asian Theology of Liberation and the Third Eye In proposing an Asian liberation theology, Aloysius Pieris articulates a religious spirituality of the poor in the struggle for the liberation of the poor. What underscores a specifically Asian context in association with the Third World is its overwhelming poverty and its multifaceted religiousness. Pieris’ approach becomes the matrix for characterizing the distinctiveness of Asian theology in a true sense. He maintains that the option to be poor in an Asian perspective becomes a counter proposal to a preferential option for the poor in liberation theology of Latin America.68 Thus he emphasizes poverty and religiosity for the sake of inculturation and liberation as it pertains to interreligious dialog in Asian theology. He interprets theology of the cross in a twofold way: 1) Jesus’ struggle to be poor in terms of renunciation of the world and 2) Jesus’ struggle for the poor in terms of renunciation of mammon that is organized into powers and principalities. This aspect of Jesus’ life and struggle does not compete with Buddhology, but complements it. Thus the Gnostic detachment of Buddhism comes to terms with the agapeic involvement of Christianity in a struggle for liberation of the poor. For Pieris, both gnosis and agape are necessary, because neither alone is adequate in fully expressing the ultimate Source of Liberation.69 Distinct from Pieris’ liberation project, C.S. Song attempts to configure a theology from the perspective of the third eye. Song is originally from Taiwan and now teaches at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley.

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In his Asian contextual theology, Song uses the concept of the third eye to combine Endo’s Catholic Japanese concept of God’s silence with the minjung theological concept of Jesus’ sociobiography.70 According to Song, the Jewish and Greco-Roman character of the New Testament must be transformed and transplanted into the Asian religious matrix and experience of suffering. Christian religion that is imported ino Asia from the West is shaped and conceptualized by western metaphysics and culture. In order to liberate Asian theology from the dominant theology of the West, Song advocates for contextualization of theology. It promotes the original Asian value system, recovering and gaining a new Asian cultural identity for Asian people. In Song’s construction the traditional Asian folk tales and the modern Asian living stories are used as the theological resource. Song argues that “we are all under the power of the culture into which we are born. Our cultural heritage makes us what we are. Our views on life and the world are formed under the direct and indirect inf luence of our cultural tradition.” 71 Thereby Song attempts to transpose the Asian stories into the biblical stories, as conversely the biblical faith directly into the Asian world. Such transposition is characteristic of the task of contextualization of theology. Juxtaposition of Asian stories with biblical stories and transposition of Christian faith into Asian soil undermine an interpretive creativity related to a hermeneutical circle between the Asian narrative and biblical narrative in terms of appropriation, critical distanciation, transformative recognition, and self-renewal. A critical-prophetic dimension of God’s narrative in the word-event, in Song’s project, runs into adapting itself to an idealized assmption of Asianness in binary opposition to western methaphysics. Song tends to generalize the Asian cultural tradition without recognizing particular, diverse, and different streams within it. Consequently, his cultural theology of the third eye is not interested in hermeneutically refurbishing its enlightening-liberative dimension. He also does not bring an ideologically oppressive form of Asian culture under critical suspicion and rejection. Song’s concern is to reroot Western theological discourse and orientation into the Asian cultural matrix. In light of this rerooting, Song criticizes the limitations of Western theology and attempts to bring up and utilize Asian narratives and the wisdom of Asian religions by discovering the Christian narrative there. This is in tension with the more provocative concept of replanting or rerooting. Song holds that it is more interesting to merge the differences in diverse horizons than to discover the Christian narrative in the religious matrix of the religiously other.72 Song’s theology of the third eye receives inspiration from the Japanese Zen master Daisetz Suzuki who insists that Zen opens a third eye, namely the Buddhist enlightenment experience of prajna (truth-wisdom).73 However, the modern western principle of the identification or totalization

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of difference into sameness is fundamental to Song’s theological project that has little to do with the East Asian principle of qualified nonduality or language of analogy. Song’s attempt to essentialize Asianess grounds Jesus Christ in the crucified people. There are many “Jesuses” not only of Jewish f lesh, but of Indian, Japanese, etc. The ugly, emaciated man on the cross can be present and discovered in all human suffering. Thus, Asian Christians must discover Jesus among their own people’s life in their suffering and poverty-stricken reality. Jesus Christ is Christa as well since not Christ, but the suffering of Jesus and all people is sacramental and redemptive. This identifying principle of Jesus with the crucified people is at the center of Song’s theology of the crucified people.74 He controversially argues that all Western theological thinking should be discarded because it is not grounded in the daily lives of people.75 Song’s Asian third-eye theology begins with an appreciation of indigenous people’s symbols and images as a way of critiquing Western theological thinking. As a result he runs into romanticizing an Asian way of thinking so that it can be implanted into the biblical narrative and theological discourse. Here the plant and the soil are thought of as static, stable, immutable, and externally related. This dangerous tendency is preferred in Song’s theology. He is not convinced of a hermeneutical view that is dynamic and internally related and therefore mutually affected by the interaction of their horizons. Rather he argues that both the plant and the soil must be creatively transformed by the process of implanting or replanting. Song further argues that theology must be defined as human talk rather than God talk: “Human realities are theological realities.” 76 Here, exegesis is replaced by eisegesis which introduces one’s own ideas and biased reading into the text. Analogical speech about God and human beings is replaced by the self-projection of human experience as God-experience. Song’s third-eye theology dislocates the initiative of God’s action in an analogical and correlative relationship with the world and humanity. Asian Irregular Christology in Light of God’s Narrative with Israel A serious critique from the German side is raised against Asian minjung theology. Ahn is deeply challenged by Wolfgang Kroeger, his former colleague and a German missionary scholar working in South Korea. Kroeger’s accusation is that Ahn’s minjung biblical exegesis runs in an antiJewish direction when compared to others in the emancipation project of Third World theology. Wolfgang Kroeger worked over a period of several years in Korea as Ahn’s associate and had direct experience with minjung theology and community. He takes issue with the anti-Semitic tendencies of Ahn’s minjung biblical exegesis that underscores a “Declaration of Farewell to Judaism.” 77 But contrary to Kroeger’s unfortunate critique, Ahn conceives of the Jewish character of Jesus in terms of the homeless, driven-out, scattered

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Jews and Jewish Christians after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Here, ochlos in a Jewish contour is fundamental and central, so that the Jewish prophetic character of Jesus is not expatriated, but rather highlighted in Ahn’s minjung interpretation of the Scripture. Additionally, the Korean church has no experience with the Jewish community, at all. Rather it underwent the Japanese colonial experience, ideological division between Republic South and Communist North, and subsequent military dictatorship. Nevertheless, Ahn’s schooling in historical criticism did not prepare him to take into consideration Jesus’ faithfulness to the Torah for minjung theological development. His exegetical method goes too far, separating the social life setting of Jesus from the biblical tradition of the Torah, so that Jesus is pictured unilaterally as the Total Liberator from the Jewish tradition. Critically reviewing the limitations of minjung theology, Asian irregular theology takes a step further in redefining Jesus’ sociobiography in a Jewish profile. The Jewish character of Jesus in an Asian irregular perspective is articulated in the fact that Jesus can be seen with reference to Moses’ liberating action of leading Israel out of Egypt. God’s liberating act through Moses is bound with God’s redemptive act in Jesus. In the life setting of Matthew’s Gospel, the story of Jesus is set forth as a new Torah by incorporating Q (An anonymous source; previously composed string of Jesus’ sayings) into Jesus’ life and mission. Jesus can be seen as the embodied Torah and his mission as confirming his fulfillment of Moses. Jesus’ teaching is not completely in opposition to that of the Pharisees. Jesus was an artisan who received training both from John the Baptist and as a Pharisee. He presents himself as the harbinger and arbiter of God’s rule. Jesus worked mainly among Judeans, in Galilee, and the adjacent lands, visiting both rural and cosmopolitan areas. Jesus avoided Greek cities like Sepphoris and Tiberias. Jesus distinguishes himself from the Pharisaic fellowship by his fellowship with tax collectors and public sinners and also by his announcement, in terms of forgiveness and the embrace of the socially and religiously marginalized, of God’s reign and order.78 The history of Jesus in the synoptic gospels is patterned according to Israel’s history with God. Jesus appears in John 6:14 as a prophet like Moses. In John 5:46 we read that Moses wrote about Jesus. Moses is used to accuse the Jews: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me” ( John 5: 46). There is a connection between Moses’ leadership of the people of Israel through the wilderness and Jesus’ accompaniment with ochlos in a Jewish and non-Jewish fashion. In Phil 2:8 Jesus became obedient unto his death on the cross. This implies Jesus’ obedience to the Torah until his death for the sake of the sanctification of the divine name, Kiddush ha Shem; even death on the cross. Hence, Torah remains as an indispensable concept in the understanding of Jesus and Jesus is understood from the perspective of Torah.

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Ahn advocates for his minjung hermeneutics in his thesis of Galilee versus Jerusalem. However, his thesis becomes questionable to the degree that Jesus of Galilee is inseparably connected with Jesus of Jerusalem. It is instructive to see that Mark’s emphasis on Galilee does not contradict Mark’s affirmation of the Hebrew Scripture; Jesus converses with scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees over issues of Torah. It is certain that Mark challenges the Pharisaic tradition of the elders and attacks the corruption of the temple that dominated Jerusalem economically. In Mark 7:1–8 (cf. Matt. 15:3) we perceive that Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees and Torah teachers stands in the line of the prophetic word of Isaiah. “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines” (Mark 7: 6–7). The commandments of the Torah take precedence over the traditions of the elders. Jesus’ confession of Israel’s Shema (Mark 12:29–30; cf. Deut 6:4–5) is striking insofar as Jesus proclaims to the scribe who answers Jesus wisely: “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12: 34f ). Jesus invites his disciples to travel up to Jerusalem with him. Luke replaces Mark’s concentration on Galilee with a concentration on Jerusalem. Jesus’ trip to Jerusalem is theologically important. In Luke 18:31ff Jerusalem is depicted as the place where “everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.” In Luke 19:41–44 and 21:20–24 the ruin of Jerusalem in the year of 70 August has been interpreted as a consequence of the Jewish rejection of Jesus as the Messiah. In Luke 9:30–31 Moses and Elijah appear in glory and speak of Jesus’ departure, which Jesus was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Jesus’ way to Jerusalem is written in Torah and the prophets. In Luke 9:51 Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem. In Luke 23:27–31 Jesus regards the suffering of Jerusalem as more important than his own suffering. Jesus’ suffering is a suffering in solidarity with his ruined city. He calls for our attention and participation in the suffering of this city. “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children” (Luke 23:28). In Luke 24:44 we read that what is written about Jesus in the Law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Everything written about Jerusalem is fulfilled. In Luke 24:49 Jesus encourages the disciples to stay in Jerusalem. “Repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” This is the word of Jesus, promised to his disciples after the resurrection. Jesus’ movement in Galilee, which was the hope of the poor, is reinterpreted for Luke’s social situation with emphasis on the important meaning of Jerusalem. Jesus, seen in sociobiographical partisanship with the poor, is also “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:32). In this light, Bonhoeffer’s insight deserves attention: “Jesus Christ was the promised Messiah of the Israelite-Jewish people, and for that reason the line of our forefathers goes back beyond the appearance of Jesus

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Christ to the people of Israel. Western history is, by God’s will, indissolubly linked with the people of Israel, not only genetically but also in a genuine uninterrupted encounter. The Jew keeps open the question of Christ . . . .An expulsion of the Jews from the west must necessarily bring with it the expulsion of Christ. For Jesus Christ was a Jew.” 79 The Irregular Theologia Crucis and Theological Discourse of Parrhēsia We cannot understand Jesus properly apart from God’s act through the minjung event in our contemporary context. God’s narrative embraces Schriftlickeit (the written word denoting the word of Jesus in connection to life of ochlos-minjung) as well as Sprachlichkeit (spoken word implying the ongoing and dynamic event of the word of God in relation to the contemporary minjung event). The subject matter of the Scripture is God’s newness through Jesus Christ who stands fundamentally in partisanship for and solidarity with ochlos-minjung. Our theological existence is shaped, challenged, and surprised by the irregular act of God’s speech as heard and discerned in minjung’s discourse and movement in the public sphere. To the degree that an understanding of Jesus is open ended in view of a synchronic-pneumatological minjung event (in the sense of Sprachlickeit), the concept of minjung resists a systematic definition. Rather, it remains a challenging concept to the Christian church from the perspective of the irregular dynamism of God’s word-event. A hermeneutic of God’s narrative is constructed in a synchronic-transversal sense while emphasizing God’s ongoing work in the life of the alienated, marginalized, and victimized in their social location. In Mark 8:30 we perceive that Jesus does not want to be systematized through the people’s expectation or the disciple’s confession of him as the Messiah. Rather, Jesus begins to teach that the Son of man will undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes. Jesus’ response to Peter’s confession in reference to the suffering messianic Son of Man constitutes the basis, criterion, and attestation of an Asian irregular deliberation of Jesus as the “Human One” (Dan 7:13f )— the passive form of Jesus as the suffering servant. Jesus, as the Human One, assumes suffering humanity in a communal sense of “the holy ones of the Most High” (Dan 7:27). Jesus rejects Peter’s understanding of the Messiah, which includes the political restoration of Israel. However, as the “Human One” Jesus inevitably has a political consequence in his discourse of parrhēsia (Mark 8:32; openly, frankly or boldly) regarding his vocation for God’s sake. A parrhēsia form of discourse expresses a spirit of resistance, questioning the institutionalized authority in the religious and political sphere. Parrh ēsia, speaking to each other frankly, finds political-religious meaning and discourse in the public sphere for the sake of promoting the full humanity of the marginalized, the victim, and the voiceless. It also retains the internal critical function of distancing a fanatic tendency of minjung-messianism.

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In Mark 8:27, while in the district of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus questions his disciples about his identity. The city was rebuilt by Herod Philip and named Caesarea. This was a major Hellenistic territory. It is the local border line between the Jews and the Gentiles. This perspective parallels a description of the Son of Man in the context of Dan 7 on the borderline between Israel and the nations. Jesus, the Son of Man, is a boundary standing between Israel and the nations. Therefore, it is symbolic that the first Christ confession comes on the borderline between the Jews and the Gentiles. Jesus as the Son of Man retains an indispensable framework within the promise of the messianic Son of Man according to Dan 7. In Dan 7:27 the Son of Man leads the fight for Israel while at the same time fighting for all. If Jesus confesses himself as the Son of Man, he works on the border between the Jews and the Gentiles for Israel and for the nations. The Son of Man, seen in the perspective of “the holy ones of the Most High,” implies Jesus with his people― ochlos― in a collective sense, rather than as an individual man without connection to his people. “[His] kingdom . . . shall be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High” (Dan 7: 27f ). In a similar fashion, the suffering servant in Isa 53 cannot be unilaterally reduced to the individual personality of Jesus. Jesus as a collective person stands connected from the beginning with the mass suffering of innocent victims. The Son of Man in Dan 7 and also the suffering servant in Isa 53 provide an insight that Asian irregular theology uses to provocatively conceptualize and develop the sociobiography of Jesus with the public multitude of innocent victims. Jesus represents a life history and communal movement in the social history of ochlos. This perspective offers an analogical configuration for the interpretation the story of the Good Samaritan from the standpoint of the victim in the street. Jesus is identified with a Samaritan as a religious outsider and participates in the life of victim. Therefore the Son of Man’s sociobiographical setting is defined by his identity as a religious outsider and innocent victim. This irregular hermeneutic expands the horizon of theologia crucis in matters pertaining to the reality of social material suffering, and it takes seriously Jesus’ statement― “The publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before you” (Matt 21:31). The Christological tradition of Jesus cannot be construed apart from a hermeneutical view of Jesus as the Son of Man from below in his social historical life setting. Given the irregularity of word-event, theologia crucis is an expression of Jesus’ sociobiography in accompaniment with the lost public multitude (ochlos-minjung). Here it is important to distinguish a threefold form of theologia crucis (ecclesial, historical, and irregular) as it engages with a project of emancipation and transformative recognition of religious outsiders. Theologia crucis in the first ecclesial form is based on the atonement theology that necessitates an individual-personal faith. This perspective is well expressed by the doctrine of justifying grace. But this perspective cannot be understood and implemented apart from Theologia crucis in its

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historical form that refers to Jesus’ sociobiographical solidarity with the public sinners. This second historical form of theologia crucis upholds the Christian praxis of parrhesiatic discipleship and emancipation that participates and serves in God’s mission of accompanying innocent victims. Theologia crucis in the third irregular form is connected with the universal Christ of Paul’s experience, and in Luther’s writings, in light of the resurrection of the crucified. Here, the universal Christ meets a reality of cosmic dukkha in intercultural faith communities as well as the ecological suffering of creaturely realms. Theologia crucis is interconnected in the threefold sense: ecclesial, historical, and irregular, in terms of the hermeneutical-analogical logic of “distinction yet non-separation” or the East Asian principle of soku (“not one, yet not two”). In the multilayered forms of theologia crucis, a missiology of word-event contextualizes fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) and paves the way for developing an analogical-discursive principle: Verbum Dei quaerens intellectum et dialogum (The Word of God seeks understanding and dialog.) Jesus’ misison as word-event accompanies those on the underside of history and transformativly acknowledges the religious outsiders. In Hermeneutics of the Subject, Foucault developes the concept of parrhēsia as a mode of discourse in which one speaks openly and truthfully about one’s opinions and ideas without the use of rhetoric, manipulation, or generalization. In his 1983 Berkeley lecture, Foucault sums up the ancient Greek concept of parrhēsia more precisely as a verbal activity. In this activity one expresses one’s personal relationship to truth, even by audaciously risking one’s life. In parrhēsia, one uses one’s freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, falsehood or silence, critique instead of f lattery, and ethical sincerity instead of self-interest and moral indifference.80 In the classic discipline of rhetoric, parrhēsia is a figure of speech. Parrhēsia means to speak candidly or to ask forgiveness for so speaking. The term is borrowed from the Greek παρρησία (παν = all + ρησις / ρημα = utterance/speech) meaning literally “to speak everything” and by extension “to speak freely,” “to speak boldly,” or “boldness.” It implies not only freedom of speech, but also the obligation to speak the truth for the common good, even at personal risk. In contrast to the relatively few appearances of parrhēsia in classical Greek, parrhēsia is used extensively with reference to Jesus. This discursive form has played a major role in the debate over Jesus’ life and his messianic consciousness. Mark’s form of parrhēsia must be sought primarily in Jesus’ ministry and mission in his socio-biographical solidarity with the public sinners and tax collectors, though Jesus does speak “plainly” (with parrh ēsia) about his upcoming rejection, crucifixion, and resurrection in response to Peter’s confession (Mark 8:32). Jesus also uses parrhēsia in response to the Pharisees (Luke 13:31–32). There are considerably more references to parrhēsia in the Gospel of John. The disciples beg for Jesus to tell them “plainly” (with parrhēsia)

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whether he is the Messiah (10:24). Jesus’ somewhat evasive answer (10:25) is later interpreted as follows when he says: “I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures, but will tell you plainly (parrhēsia) of the Father (16:25).” Here parrhēsia is to be understood as a clarification of the obscure, hidden, or enigmatic statements that Jesus might formerly have taught. The parrh ēsia is Jesus’ language of the cross. In this regard, the Fourth Evangelist might have had Jesus use the word parrh ēsia to contrast him with groups of (proto) Gnostics who were committed to the secret teachings of Jesus. Jesus is a public, socially engaged teacher who did in fact speak in riddles but would clarify all things. A related use of parrhēsia is found in the writer of Luke’s continuation of the story of the church where it means “audacious speech,” the ability of believers to hold their own in discourse before political and religious authorities (e.g. Acts 4:13: “Now when they saw the boldness [την παρρησίαν] of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and recognized them as companions of Jesus.”)81 One of the significant things about Luke’s portrait of Paul is that he preaches with parrhēsia. This “freedom of speech” is actually one of the crucial things that Luke is trying to communicate to a (Roman) reader. Paul is arrested in Jerusalem in Acts 21 and spends the rest of the book on trial, speaking in his own defense or under restrictions. In the context of these restrictions the message of parrhēsia comes out. First, when Paul is taken to King Agrippa in Acts 26 to defend his preaching of the message of Jesus he says, “Indeed, the king knows about these things, and to him I speak freely; for I am certain that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this was not done in a corner (26:26).” Here, the Christian gospel has been spoken freely (with parrhēsia) in the public sphere. Moreover, in Acts 28 Paul is ostensibly sent to Rome because he is a Roman citizen and has appealed to the emperor for a hearing of his case. “He lived there two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness (parrhēsia) and without hindrance (28:30–31).” Parrhēsia is an indispensable part of Christian discourse that witnesses to the Gospel of Jesus that underscores an irregular theology of the cross and God’s mission as word-event. Paul was bent on preaching fully, openly, and with courage, no matter what happened to him. Living in perpetual danger, Paul was keenly aware that he needed courage to preach the Gospel. In the courageous dimension of parrhēsia, a Christian ethic is explicit and obvious, and ethic of putting oneself on the line in the spirit of parrhēsia. Asian irregular theology of word event takes into account parrh ēsia as boldness interacting with Paul’s quality of openness and audacity for the sake of verbal activity of theologia crucis in the public sphere. Paul’s candid speaking is the hallmark of his interpersonal relationships. The audacious

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Christian message heralded by Paul has functioned as the embodiment of parrhēsia in minjung discourse in speaking of the irregular narrative of God’s word-event through the face of the innocent victims and religious outsiders. Parrhēsia is the act of fearlessly speaking the truth in witness to God’s mission as word event in minjung life. To engage in parrhēsia is never a neutral act. Parrhēsia simultaneously incorporates aesthetic and ethical dimensions. Parrhēsia is to be further sought in critically examining the intersection between knowledge and power and power and discursive formation in questions of subjectivity, politics, ethics, aesthetics, and truth. Karl Barth, in a theological discourse on parrhēsia, contrasts a Christian discourse of parrh ēsia with the reality of injustice and violence—a reality of lordless powers.82 Parrhēsia, as a verbal activity of the church’s mission, announces the coming of God’s kingdom in the public sphere by denouncing injustice, violence, and dominion and by promoting the full humanity and digninity of those on the margin. This discursive praxis undergirds cultural reconciliation in an age of global Christianity by transformatively acknowledging and embracing people’s lives of different cultures as extraordinary and irregular manners of communication of divine narrative. The discursive mode of parrh ēsia underscores critical points in all cultures and in our time. The very act of reading, writing, thinking, and interpreting must be built on this perilously critical frankness and audacity, doing something courageous for the sake of God and those who are deviant, unfit, and voiceless. Jesus’ Mission as Light and Hope for Ochlos-Minjung Mark’s language of ochlos describes those who are Jesus’ companions in life. Mark, the first Gospel, demonstrates Jesus’ sociobiography with ochlos as an important intratextual narrative indicating Jesus’ mission for the kingdom of God. Jesus and ochlos also reference the relationship of Mark’s narrative to the world by projecting Jesus-ochlos language on to it. The ochlos, as portrayed in the Gospel of Mark, is translated into an East Asian context as minjung theologians engage with the sociopolitical reality of minjung. Thus, mimesis of the intratextual narrative indicates the relationship of Mark’s narrative to the actual world that we inhabit. In the relation of reference and mimesis, language is analogical and parabolic to the degree that the textual world comes to transform the actual world and is also reinterpreted anew in different places and times. The horizon of the biblical narrative encounters the life world of minjung in an Asian social and public location and is reinterpreted in view of the current reality of the people at the grass roots level. In turn, the current social and public reality expands and deepens the intratextual meaning of the Word of God. The subject matter of the Scripture becomes alive and attains a new meaning as it encounters the extra-biblical narrative of non-Christian religious classics and engages in contemporary

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discourse. Here, a hermeneutic of God’s narrative engages a circle that connects the subject matter of a text with the life of a people in a present context by reframing both text and life dynamically and analogically in an open-ended process of interpretation that is driven by an interest in emancipation and interculturation. The present context of minjung reality helps identify a stream of volcanic lava that penetrates throughout the Bible. This strategy of interpretation represents an attempt to synchronize the minjung tradition in the Bible with the East Asian people’s experience of poverty-stricken reality and suffering without ignoring the historical distance between text and context. A social existential project of Jesus’ sociobiography with ochlosminjung is of hermeneutical and analogical character because it fills the gap between “then-there” and “here-now.” God’s speech event can be recognized in the minjung event and discourse outside the ecclesial sphere because Jesus died outside the walls of Jerusalem and promised that he would meet the minjung in Galilee—Jesus’ continued place of mission after the resurrection. A construction of the real Jesus lies behind the doctrinization of Jesus. By getting back to authentic language of the historical Jesus in his social location, we are brought to a deeper understanding of the subject matter of Jesus’ gospel narrative for God’s kingdom that comes to us as a living metaphor of God’s mission as word-event. In the New Testament the frequently used Greek concept expresses poverty. Ptōchos denotes poverty in the social, material realm and implies a real and concrete human social situation. The special significance of the poor for the Gospel must be understood from the socioeconomic and religious (Jewish) origin of the Christian movement. This aspect is special and clear in the historical beginnings of Palestinian (particularly Galilee) Judaism. The movement connected with the name of Jesus was an internal Jewish movement in Palestine that arose among the poor who were also participants in Jesus’ mission. As the son of a carpenter Jesus does not belong to the status of the poor. The carpenter is neither privileged nor despised. However, Galilee is used in a pejorative sense, because “no prophet is to arise from Galilee” ( John 7:52). Jesus’ decision to be among the poor is ethically motivated and made for the sake of partisanship for the poor. Jesus’ and his disciples’ hunger is not accidental, as seen in the Sabbath debate in Mark 2:23–28 and Jesus’ judgment of a fig tree in Mark 11:12–14. The Jesus’ movement has a local limitation in Galilee and works therein. Its confrontation with other Jewish renewal movements (especially the Pharisaic movement) is related to the interpretation of the Torah, rather than disputing and eradicating the validity of the Torah. In the case of the Sabbath conf lict (John 5:17–47; Mark 2:23) we perceive that the poverty-stricken reality of the poor is accepted in the Jesus movement as the principle of interpretation in discussion of the Torah as God’s gracious instruction for life. “The Sabbath was made for humankind.” The gift of

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Torah through Moses is not abandoned by Jesus. Rather, Jesus stands for the original intention of Sabbath-Torah that affirms and preserves life against certain legalistic precepts of Sabbath-Halacha. People may do good on the Sabbath (Mark 3:4). Such is the interpretation of the Sabbath command that embraces the healing of people on the Sabbath (John 7:23).83 The trip to Jerusalem has less to do with a military march toward an overthrow of a central place of power and more to do with the expected epiphany of the God of Israel in Jerusalem. “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?” (Mark 11:17f ). Jesus’ life and mission can be deliberated through consideration of his economic and social condition and also in light of his faithfulness to God’s Torah. Social historical discipleship is, surprisingly enough, accentuated when Jesus’ invites his disciples and ochlos to follow the teachings of the Pharisees and scribes (Matt 23). In Mark 2:15 it is reported that Jesus and his disciples join a meal as guests in the house of the tax collector Levi, many tax collectors and sinners also participate in this meal. From this narrative we assume that tax collectors are a part of Jesus’ ministry. In Palestine there were many tax collectors. A conceptual combination of tax collectors and sinners provides a clue to understanding the sinner from a socioeconomic perspective. Such occupations elicited discrimination from the community. Similar attitudes are elicited about the prostitute, the murderer, the sick, and the thief. In Mark 2:13–17 the concept of the sinner is socially connected to the tax collector, and the poor are called recipients of donations (Mark 10:21). Such donations to the poor are interpreted as building treasure in heaven. The poor Lazarus is a beggar with sores (Luke 16:19). Jesus proclaims: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now for you will be filled” (Luke 6:20). The prophetic message in Isa 61:1 is understood in the Lucan narrative as being fulfilled in Jesus’ saying: blessed is the poor. In Matt 11:5 Jesus answers the question raised by John the Baptist. Jesus brings the beginning of God’s reign to the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, the dead, and the poor. The poor hear the message of God’s reign and through hearing their situation is transformed into the children of God. Jesus’ blessing of the poor implies that his coming is the beginning of God’s kingdom. The poor who are regarded as a scandal before God are transformed into the blessing of the kingdom of God; the poor is taken seriously in the hope of salvation. The eschatological reality of God’s reign breaks through in Jesus’ sociobiographical mission with the poor; thus a critique of social reality is retained, calling the disciples to actualize Jesus’ blessing of the poor in different times and places. Eschatology is not separated from world renewal, although this aspect has become a negligible side of a theological project of Christology from above. In light of world transforming eschatology, the poor retain a special place in church’s mission and in its diconal service to them within our local public sphere, while engaging in the reality of global Christianity.

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Jesus “has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:52–53). After the crucifixion of Jesus this social transformative longing for world renewal, as heard in the Magnificat, was present in the heart of Jesus’ disciples. The message of the reign of God’s kingdom in Jesus’ mission belongs to the poor. In this kingdom the hungry become satisfied, the weeping will laugh (Luke 6:20), and the misery of the poor will be resolved. Then “the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matt 20:16). The story of the Lazarus who is in Abraham’s bosom offers hope for those who are burdened by the sins of the powerful in their socioeconomic context. The ochlos-minjung who suffer sociomaterial inequality in different times and places are central and fundamental to the actual and concrete God’s mission as word-event illustrated in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Intercultural Ecclesiology: Communio Sanctorum and Filial Piety In an era of World Christianity, the Christian narrative is translatable and is connected with its constants in varying contexts. Christians read the Scripture from a particular location. Christian discourses allow for diverse expressions and understandings concerning such articles of faith as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and Jesus Christ as people immerse themselves in the biblical narrative with their unique perspective. If “contextualization or inculturation is a theological and missiological imperative,” 84 an intercultural ecclesiology is needed. The ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:19) underlines an attempt at various levels to construct an intercultural ecclesiology that embraces cultural reconciliation. The church’s ministry of reconciliation implies a ministry of prophetic dialog, extending its ecclesiology to public and cultural issues such as filial piety and ancestral rites. The issue of ancestral rites was at the crux of sixteenth century disputes regarding the Christian mission to China. Matteo Ricci’s profound study of Confucianism and his appreciation of ancestral rites remain a great example of acculturation and accommodation in the history of the Christian mission, but not without problems. Generally speaking, in the context of East Asia, conversion to Protestant Christianity—unlike Catholic Christianity—implies a necessary break with cultural tradition. When the abandonment of the communion of both the living and the beloved deceased becomes a primary condition for becoming a Christian, it also entails the acceptance of the cultural values and systems of Western Christianity without reservation. If the Christian mission is capable of transcending the implantation of a Western Christian cultural system into a non-Christian culture and belief system, it is especially necessary to explore the possibility of dialog between Confucian culture and the

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Christian narrative in order to find a locus for ancestral rites within a Christian ecclesial perspective. For instance, the Vietnamese bishops in the Roman Catholic Church have made liturgical innovations that embrace the ancestral ceremony. In the second Eucharistic prayer it is stated: “Remember also the faithful, our brothers and sisters, who rest in peace in the expectation of the resurrection, and the dead who can only trust in your mercy. Remember in particular our ancestors, our parents, and our friends who have left this world . . .” 85 On the other hand, ancestral issues become more theologically contextualized as they relate to the African project of Trinity of ancestors: God the Father ancestor, the Son Brother ancestor, and the Spirit Sister ancestor. African scholars argue that the Christian narrative must be more fully integrated into the African people’s way of life in their cultural and religious lifeworld. For Christianity to be missional in an African context, it must adapt so that it can speak to their hearts and enter their public sphere, the place where their soul is nourished and breathes. Given the intercultural endeavor to appreciate the issue of ancestral rites, it is important to reframe ecclesiology in a missional-intercultural contour that is more amenable to the traditional and indigenous issue of ancestral communion. What is an Ancestral Rite? With archeological research and the discovery of the oracle bone inscriptions in ancient China, there is evidence of early religiosity in China, including the ancestral cult, divination, sacrifice, shamanism, and others. Ancestral veneration is found in primal religions and can be considered the root of every religion.86 It is generally agreed that Chinese religion can be characterized as both patriarchal and ancestral. Among the ancient Chinese, generally considered as the Shang Dynasty to the Chou Dynasty, the God of the Chou Dynasty (1122–256 BCE) appeared to have been an ancestral spirit of the ruling house. Previous generations had believed in T’ien (Heaven) as the great ancestral spirit. For instance, the ancient people in both the Shang (c. 1766–1123 BCE) and the Chou Dynasties believed in a heavenly place for good people. In addition to belief in the spirits of their departed ancestors, there were beliefs in other spirits that were worshipped, including a supreme deity, astral spirits, and spirits of nature (mountains spirits, rivers spirits, and the like).87 In ancient China a supreme deity who ranked above all other spirits and deities was called Lord (Ti), or Lord-on-high (Shang-di). Although the exact etymological meaning is explained in various interpretations, Shang-di is usually understood in an anthropomorphic sense, and is thus considered the supreme deity. In Shang times, Shang-di was represented as an impersonal and transcendent being. In Chou times (1122–256 BCE), Heaven became

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the preferred term for God. The term T’ien designates a personal God who was interested in human affairs. T’ien, possibly as the supreme ancestor figure, was worshipped by Chou’s royal family. In the process of the Chou’s conquering of Shang, Ti and T’ien were combined to designate the Supreme Being, which was regarded as a personal God. Given this fact, ancestral rites cannot be properly understood without the veneration of Shang-di. The practice of sacrifice in general began as a simple act of providing food for the dead. The early practice of ritualized ancestral rites was closely related to the conception of the Ultimate. In the Book of Poetry, we read of ritual actions offered to ancestors: “In due order, treading cautiously, we purify your oxen and sheep. We carry out the rice–offering, the harvest offering . . . Praying and sacrificing at the gate . . . The Spirits enjoyed their drink and food. They assign to you a hundred blessings.” 88 In a Confucian context, however, the ancestral cult was transformed by virtue of filial piety, usually thought to be central to Confucian teaching. The word for filial piety, hsiao/xiao, indicates imagery in which an older person is supported and respected by a younger one, arousing a feeling of affection. This characterizes the Confucian attitude and understanding of human life in terms of the past and eternity. Herein the sense of continuity and stewardship is anchored in the family life. The act of filial piety is not extended merely to ancestors, grandparents, or parents, but also to other living members of the family. Ancestral Rites in Confucianism Confucius had a profound sense of reverence for the will (or mandate) of Heaven, which is the basis for his religious and moral orientation. According to the Confucian system, revering Heaven is embedded in the human attitude of standing in awe of the Mandate of Heaven. The following statement offers some insight intoConfucius’ self-consciousness and philosophy of life. At fifteen I set my heart on learning [to be a sage] At thirty I became firm. At forty I had no more doubts. At fifty I understood Heaven’s Will. At sixty my ears were attuned [to this Will]. At seventy I could follow my heart’s desires, without overstepping the line. (Analects 2:4).89 Confucius was said to be a believer in Heaven as a personal deity. His teaching consisted of highlighting the moral character of human relationships in terms of reciprocity and neighborliness: “[D]o not do to others what you would not have them do to you” (Analects 15:23). This Confucian teaching of reciprocity is consonant with Jesus’ teaching, “do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matt 7:12). The

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famous Confucian Five Relationships (the ruler-minister, father-son, husband-wife, elder and younger brother, and friend-friend) indicates a family model of filial piety. Confucian society can be conceived to be a large family since “[w]ithin the four seas all men are brothers” (Analects 12:5). Confucius’ main teaching of ren—we can translate it in various ways: goodness, benevolence, humanity, and human-heartedness—is concerned primarily with human relationships. It is also the virtue of a superior person, and includes gentleness, loyalty (to one’s own heart and conscience), and reciprocity [respect of and consideration for others (Analects 4:15)]. Ren is based on the human nature of affection and love, because “[t]he human being of ren loves others” (Mencius 4B:28).90 Mencius (c. 321–289 BCE) elaborated on the human affection of ren in his teaching of the four beginnings (dispositions) in human nature.91 Confucianism’s Five Relationships can be extended to cover other people’s relationships with parents, elders, and children. Thus, it illustrates the meaning of universal love. Ren is also related to li (propriety or ritual) that refers more to social behavior. Ren is defined in the following words: selfconquest (K’o-chi) and the restoration of propriety ( fu-li) (Analects 12:1). Ritual is an indispensable part of Confucius’ teachings, especially regarding proper behavior in family and society. His teaching keeps the older cult of veneration for ancestors and the worship of Heaven alive. According to Confucius, a sacrifice is to be performed with the consciousness of the presence of the spirits (Analects 3:12). The ritual performance should be carried out with care, sincerity, and reverence, as if the performer stood in spiritual and symbolic communion with the dead. Therefore, rites are deeply embedded with the virtue of humanity (ren). Interpreting ritual and sacrifice in a humanitarian way, Confucius transformed ancient religious ceremonial practice in terms of filial piety and moral achievement. What is at stake is “to have a sincere attitude, a reverential heart and a virtuous motive . . . without seeking for anything to be gained.” 92 According to Confucian tradition, the ancestral cult was a memorial service held at ancestral temples, gravesides, or in homes. Wine and food libations were usually offered, with silent prostrations in front of the tables. The ancestors were allowed to allegedly taste the food before the whole family partook of the meal. This expressed the respect of the living for the dead. Confucius himself, however, is thought not to have cared about any belief in personal immortality or in the power of spirits to exercise inf luence on the life of their descendents. Confucius bans any speculation about the state of the departed. “To devote oneself earnestly to one’s duty to humanity, and, while respecting the spirits, to keep away from them, may be called wisdom.” 93 In response to the question of the life after death, Confucius said that since you do not understand life, how could you know about death? Confucius is more concerned with establishing the fellowship and continuity of the family that can be strengthened and preserved by the memorial acts of ancestral

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rites. Therefore, Confucians are inclined to take into consideration the ethical transformation of the living people in these rites. Matteo Ricci’s Mission Regarding Ancestral Rites Most of East Asian countries are inf luenced by Confucianism. The ancestral rites have been and continue to be a controversial issue in the church’s life. Ricci’s mission during the Ming dynasty (1368–1643) faced the problem of how to understand and integrate the veneration of Confucius and the ancestors with a Christian belief system. During his work in China (1582–1610), Ricci observed that the Emperor, the Confucian literati, and Chinese ordinary people made an offering to the ancestors at certain times of the year, preparing meat, fruit, perfumes, and pieces of silk cloth. Paper and incense were offered among the poorest. In this act they fulfilled the duty to serve the ancestors as if they were still alive. It is certain that they did not think the dead could come to eat the things prepared. They did this because the ancestral rites showed their love and gratitude toward the dead. This ceremony shows that the ritual was done more for the living than for the dead; that is to teach children and the uneducated ones to honor and serve their living relatives. Because they did not ascribe any divinity to the ancestors, Ricci argued that this ceremony had little to do with idolatry or superstition. Ricci encouraged Christians in China to change this ceremony to almsgiving to the poor.94 Ricci’s greatly appreciated the principle of filial piety in Chinese culture. Although many of the lower classes confused the practice of ancestral rites with divine worship, Ricci argued that China did not worship any idols. If we look to an external display of filial piety, there are no people in the world that can compare with the Chinese.95 Filial piety, which was based on the principle of blood relation, was regarded as natural law. In the Chinese cultural context, the worship of Heaven and Nature was moral, and hence naturally reasonable. Although the Confucian literati recognized one supreme deity, they did not erect special places or temples for worship.96 Ricci made some revisions of the Catholic doctrines and sought for concordance with the Confucian principle of morality. Ricci’s mission strategy was to adapt to local habits, customs, cultural patterns of morality, and indigenous beliefs. In Ricci’s model of evangelism, based on friendship and profound study of Chinese culture and language, we are aware of how well Ricci understood Chinese intellectual culture and how he took friendship as the chief virtue, making it a fulcrum for effective evangelism. Ricci’s respect for people of other cultures is demonstrated in his recognition of ancestral rites in terms of the Confucian moral teaching of filial piety. When food was offered to the dead the Chinese showed affection and gratitude in the same way that the Europeans lay f lowers at a grave. It is certain that Ricci’s legacy caused subsequent debates and controversies regarding the issue of ancestral rites.

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His negative view of Buddhism and neo-Confucianism remain a barrier to renewal. Nevertheless, his respect for Chinese culture and moral life is greatly appreciated.97 The African Theological Perspective on the Ancestor In African religion the basic structure of cultural life is clanship, promoting respect for elderly people and the ancestors. There is active engagement in establishing contact with the spiritual world of the ancestors and the Creator (Qamata). The ritual and practice of communication between the living and the dead happens at an individual level as well as at the communal level. In such communication ancestors reveal themselves in many ways because they possess supernatural status. Ancestors exercise supernatural powers on their descendents. In this light we are aware that a relationship is believed to exist between the living and the dead that articulates the interconnection of human lives with the past, present, and future. African spiritual relationships are an expression of the living descendants’ symbolic remembrance of honor and respect for their ancestors.98 The Christian radical rejection of ancestors means a loss of African cultural identity and family ties. “Now if people say to you, ‘Consult the ghosts and the familiar spirits . . .’ should not a people consult their gods . . . ?”(Isa 8:19). To avoid this loss, African theologians have attempted to reconcile Christian faith with traditional ancestorology. Their claim is that reverence or respect for ancestors has less to do with veneration of the ancestral spirits than it is an expression of family and tribal accompaniment in continuity with their departed. Ancestors live in the presence of Christ. Based on Hebrew 1:1, African theologians strive to make God’s narrative their own. By making the claim that God spoke to African forefathers before the historical revelation of Jesus Christ, African theology secures the rightful place of ancestors within the communion of saints. African theologians advocate for appreciating and experiencing the Christian narrative in their own tradition, language, and community. An African notion of resurrection (abasyuka) is ascribed to the spiritual status of their ancestors. The departed parents come back from death as resurrected ones. This African belief system is consonant with the Christian belief in resurrection. The resurrected Jesus is regarded as the Unsyuka, the one who is resurrected and the hero among and above all abasyuka. To the degree that a biblical notion of incarnation implies the assumption of human f lesh in a universal sense, African theology attempts to radicalize this implication toward the assumption of the African cultural life world. The African narrative encounters the biblical narrative so that the subject matter of the gospel is fully inculturated toward a theology of ancestors in a Trinitarian perspective. The African analogical imagination boldly projects an ancestral relation of origin within Trinitarian communal life: God the Father as the ancestor of the Son and the Son as the

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descendant of the Father are in eternal reciprocal communication in the Spirit as the Sister ancestor. Given the dynamic process of inculturation, Lamin Sanneh states: “A process of internal change was . . . initiated in which African Christians sought a distinctive way of life through mediation of the spirit, a process that enhanced the importance of traditional religions for the deepening of Christian spirituality . . . Biblical material was submitted to the regenerative capacity of African perception, and the result would be Africa’s unique contribution to the story of Christianity.” 99 Christian Community and Filial Piety: Gospel and Decalogue Ancestral worship is regarded by many scholars to be the root of World Religions. The family holds a central place among religion, especially in Confucian cultures. Here moral and ethical emphasis is given to revering one’s ancestors and honoring the living family. Confucius approves and transforms the cult of ancestors within the ethical framework of filial piety and social stability. Filial piety is expressed in terms of ancestral rites that create the bonds of nation, family, religion, and culture. The cult of the ancestors does not necessarily mean worshiping their spirits, as it frequently looks to the eye of western missionaries. Rather, the proper meaning of ancestral rites is to give respect and honor to departed parents. In doing so, opportunity is provided for the family to strengthen its solidarity and promote peaceful and harmonious life in the permanence of the family. In the Christian tradition, the communion of saints shows a proper relationship between the living and the departed in the eternal life of Jesus Christ. An early Christian tradition recognized the duty and privilege of prayer for the departed. St. Augustine prays for the soul of his saintly mother, Monica, and encourages all readers of his Confessions (IX.37) to “remember her at the altar.” However, the veneration of the departed saints becomes questionable when a certain soteriological meaning is added to the communion of saints. The reformation teaching of solus Christus interprets the communion of saints in terms of fellowship with the saints instead of veneration. The church as fellowship throughout space and time challenges any historical provincialism and parochialism and further accentuates fellowship with the departed within the communion of saints in light of the cross and resurrection of Christ. How do we evaluate the tradition of filial piety coupled with ancestral rites from a Protestant perspective? God is conceived of by a speech event in God’s companionship with the Word and the sacrament. God is the God in dialog, speaking with the other, so that the Word is with God.100 Jesus Christ as “the mirror of the fatherly heart of God” reveals God’s bosom and heart, coming to us as the narrative of Gospel by accommodating himself into the world of law and human culture. The assumption of human f lesh refers also to the dialogical dimension of the gospel narrative.

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Creation as communion takes place as God’s speech to creatures. God remains free to give God’s self wholly and fully so that creation becomes the process and space of divine giving. A concept of a dialogical God is related to God’s ongoing work in creation and culture. God is incessantly at work in the world, even in the world of religions. The concept of creatio continua is embedded within the language of promise and event, in respect to Word and sacrament and creaturely life in natural realms. The tension between God’s salvific narrative and God’s cosmic-universal drama can be overcome through God’s word-event in Christ’s reconciliation in which God makes God’s self understandable and readable in the life of creation and culture. Therefore, creation serves as the communicative field or readable text of God’s universal narrative in the reconciled world in which the Creator is present behind the creature’s life, that is, God’s masks, disguises, and analogies. It is salient to notice that Luther’s teaching of Christ’s ubiquity, when seen in this theology of creation, implies that Jesus Christ is the particular, yet universal person. In his 1526 sermon, The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ against the Fanatics,101 Luther argues that Christ is put over all creatures [Eph 1:22] and fills all things. He is the lord of all things, having all things in his hand, and he is present everywhere. The particular, inclusive narrative of Jesus Christ can become the center of all other narratives, without forcing them into its totalizing metanarrative. In his letter to Justus Jonas on 30 June, 1530,102 Luther defined the Decalogue as the dialectical logic of the Gospel, so that the Gospel becomes the rhetorical persuasion of the Decalogue. The Decalogue is in a conversational, communicative, and dialectical relation to the Gospel. Hence, the meaning of the law can be communicated and persuasive only in terms of Jesus Christ, who is as the cantus firmus (main melody) driving and fulfilling the law. Therefore, we have in Christ all of Moses, but in Moses not all of Christ. In fact, the world of the law can be understood as the external and natural environment leading to Jesus Christ. If the Decalogue is defined as “a mirror of our life,” 103 how do we understand and evaluate Confucianism’s filial piety in light of the fourth commandment of the Decalogue? Jesus Christ interprets this issue in his confrontation with the Pharisees and scribes in Matthew 15 when he says, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that whoever tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,’ then that person need not honor the father. So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God” (Matt 15:3–6). In the context of Matthew, however, the “korban” indicates that in oriental societies an issue of justice within the family system is based on the mutual bond between husband and wife, parent and child, brother and brother, sister and sister. Jesus’ teaching of the Torah is not to burden one’s life, but to

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instruct the life freed in God, interpreting the Torah as the way of life, not of death (Deut 30: 15–16) in light of the coming of God’s reign.104 Mark’s charge against Pharisaic ideology (7:9–13) serves to defend the Decalogue against a clerical interpretation that nullifies the will of God under a pretense that causes financial ostracism and impoverishment of the elderly. Mark’s commitment to the Torah is seen in his advocacy for the cause of his Galilean audience, the ochlos, those who are oppressed under the clerical system of the temple. In this regard, Jesus expands the horizon of God’s command beyond its literal meaning toward the explication of a free space for God’s reign in the life of the ochlos, transcending the dangerous zone of violating God’s command. According to Jesus’ teaching, the Torah, liberated and graced by God is to be reinstated as the way to life.105 For Luther the fourth commandment conf lates with the love of God, “doing it as if for God,” 106 with humility, respect, honor and reverence, no matter how lowly, poor, feeble, sick, eccentric, and the like the mother and father are. As God’s representatives, the ochlos occupy a significant place in Christian life. Following Paul’s statement in Eph 6:2–3, Luther defines the fourth commandment as the first commandment with a promise for Christian spiritual and moral life.107 This view does not necessarily contradict moral and ethical dimension of Confucian filial piety expressed in the ritual of ancestral rites. Luther contends that the Gentiles received the Decalogue from God the Creator. God implanted the natural law in everyone by nature. In ref lecting on Romans 2:14–15, Luther argues that the Gentiles, who do not have the Torah or Decalogue, have the law grafted in their heart.108 Since Moses agreed with the natural law, Christians accept Moses as a provider of fine examples of laws so that the Decalogue is the dialectical logic of the Gospel.109 Accordingly, the Gospel is universally relevant to everybody as the rhetorical persuasion of the Decalogue, while the Decalogue, as the natural environment, comes into dialog with the Gospel. The Decalogue finds its meaning in Jesus’ faithfulness to it, thus the Decalogue, as the dialectical logic of the Gospel, belongs to the natural environment of Jesus Christ who was born a Jew.110 If the natural law comes from God, we have no right to reject it, despite its limitations. If the gospel simply competes with or replaces the law, the gospel itself remains no more than a form of law.111 The gospel narrative is oral, living preaching with spoken word in connection to the wordevent in the Scripture,112 Luther’s way of speaking about God refers to his theological conviction that this speech comes from God. Luther’s linguistic style of particula exclusiva (“God alone,” “Christ alone,” “the scripture alone,” “the word alone,” “faith alone”) implies a tendency toward an allembracing and all inclusive comprehensiveness. The term alon, if properly understood, is closely related to “at the same time.” The particula inclusiva clarifies and makes particula exclusiva more precise.113

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In this light we need to pay attention to Luther’s provocative language in openness toward the Turkish state. “For God is a gentle and rich Lord who subjects a great deal of gold, silver, riches, dominions, and kingdoms to the godless . . . In the same way, he also makes lofty reason, wisdom, languages and eloquence subject to them, so that his dear Christians seem to be mere children, fools and beggars by contrast with them.” 114 Having considered this, Confucian filial piety finds its place in the universal narrative of the gospel. The Narrative of the Gospel as Embrace of the Other When we talk about the gospel narrative as the embrace of religious outsiders, it is enlightening to begin with an experience of a young missionary. A young missionary worked in an indigenous and tribal society for years. Asking the senior colleague to officiate at a baptism, the young missionary was primed to make the tribal people into baptized Christians. However, the tribal council’s decision in a final discussion was dismaying, because they did not want to become Christians through Christian baptism. The leaders in that tribal society fully appreciated the benefits and privileges of Christian baptism explained by the missionary: the forgiveness of sins and the assurance of eternal life. However, the problem is simply theirs, because their anscestors would not be in Christian heaven. Wishing to continue their relationship with their anscestors even after death, they feel uncomfortable about a Christian bapitsim that separates them from their deceased parents and ancestors. Given this story, God’s mission as word-event deepens the Christian narrative of God’s justifying grace and reconciliation in Jesus Christ for the world. God is reconciled in Christ to the world. In light of God’s reconciliation, the grace of justification takes place as the gift of the Holy Spirit outside of us, nothing to do with one’s own effort or righteousness. In light of the dynamism of word event through Christ’s justification and reconciliation, we already saw that Bonhoeffer’s poem “Christians and Pagans” points out that the specific difference in the experience of Christians is their co-suffering with God in the world of violence to promote God’s compassion in solidarity with religious outsiders. Here nonChristians are embraced in the narrative of God’s compassion.115 As we discussed this poem in reference to a Buddhist poem of compassion and a Confucian-Taoist poem of utopian longing in Chapter 5, theologia crucis is interculturally shaped and sharpened in light of God’s reconciliation with the world. The word of reconciliation can be heard and implemented in encounter of wisdom and compassion of religious outsiders in the multicultural society. For the sake of cultural reconciliation it is illuminating to introduce an episode that took place in a public cemetery. A Caucasian family visited the grave of their departed. They placed some f lowers on the grave in memory of their loved one. They bowed in silence for a while. Some yards apart from it an East Asian family prepared rice

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and fruits for their departed and knelt and bowed in memory. Curiously, one of the Caucasian family members approached the East Asian family to ask whether the departed would return to eat the rice in front of the grave. The East Asian person, a little surprised, responded by asking whether the Caucasian departed would also return to sit and smell the f lowers near the grave. To East Asian people a bowl of rice symbolizes a deep spiritual life in ongoing fellowship with the ancestors—just as a bouquet of f lowers does for Caucasian people. Rice and f lowers are “not one, but not two,” as a way of expressing a memorial act for the beloved departed. In light of God’s narrative in reconciliation and embrace we should appreciate different expressions of filial piety and reverence of parents for the sake of mission of word-event in an era of global Christianity.116 The graveyard story tells us how and to what extent the word-event takes place in a public and postcolonial context. This story includes a proclamation of parrhēsia in an intercultural and cross-global sphere. A proclamation of the living voice of God and God’s irregular grace can be heard and discerned in the life of religious outsiders. In light of God’s narrative with religious others, the irregular side of God’s grace is revealed as a surprise, a delight, and a challenge to the church to become humble before the mystery of God and open toward people of other cultures. Such a process of surprise, delight, and challenge meets us from beyond—in light of the eschatological coming of the Word of God. God’s mission of word-event is taking place in an ongoing and dynamic way in every corner of life. If we find filial piety within God’s all-comprehensive goodness—in other words, the logic of the Gospel— should we not receive and appreciate it as an act of God’s communicative address to the Christian church in an incomprehensible and mysterious way through religious outsiders? Luther understands the Gospel in the five-fold sense in “The Smalcald Articles” (1537). Among these five forms communal conversation and the consolation of brothers and sisters is found alongside preaching, the sacraments, and the ecclesial office. When seen as a dialectical logic of the Gospel, filial piety teaches that there is no reverence for God without reverence for parents, including the deceased. For East Asians the ritual of ancestral respect is conceived to be a way of strengthening and preventing their spirituality and culture from being destroyed by the excessive inf luence of western colonization and Western Christianity. The aspect of mutual conversation should be extended and actualized in the life of brothers and sisters in the East Asian church who struggle with their filial piety in spiritual communion and reverence for their deceased parents and ancestors. This perspective strengthens the pastoral consolation of brothers and sisters in their faith journey. Especially Asian liberal-minded Protestants argue for an inclusive dimension of the Gospel in their spiritual relationship with their departed parents. This demand may be justified by Luther’s fifth form of the Gospel: mutual conversation and consolation of brothers and sisters, namely life together in the Christian community.

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The proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the sacraments are central in the communion of saints. The Christian life together under the communio sanctorum is characterized by the forgiveness of sin, the renewal of life in fellowship, mutual conversation and comfort, and diaconal service. Thus, a missional ecclesiology can be characterized in terms of koinonia, colloquium, and diakonia. In the church as communio, Jesus Christ as God’s promise comes ahead of time in the Word and sacrament—fully, yet in eschatological openness. If Jesus Christ is to be understood as the source of both the present reality and the eschatological future of the world, we may experience a dynamic connection of past events with future hope through the presence of Christ in communion. Here it is of special significance to consider Jesus’ descent into hell in reference to his presence in the Eucharist more concretly and universally. The formula concerning Jesus’ descent into hell is understood as Christ’s breakthrough and triumphal procession over the power of sin and death, that is, the subjugation of Satan. Hence, the meaning of Christ’s abandonment is seen in terms of Christ’s eternal damnation in which Jesus experienced of the torments of hell, along with Christ’s descent into hell as the event of defeating and conquering hell. In this context, a cosmic soteriology of total liberation is implied by Christ’s solidarity and companionship with the dead, embracing the temporal dimension, as well as the future.117 In this liberative, soteriological framework, God’s self-sacrifice, forgiveness, and overcoming of hell’s torment present in the eternal Word of God take place as the judgment of the world as well as the grace of God.118 Through the descent into hell, Jesus Christ removed the barrier between God and human beings and established peace with the world. Through death and resurrection, Jesus Christ becomes the Lord of the dead and the living. Through his embrace of the realm of death, the dead are in Christ. According to I Peter 3:19f, Christ went and preached to the spirits in prison, “who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah.” God’s universal covenant with Noah in its genuine sense is sharpened and fulfilled in Christ’s proclamation of the Gospel to the spirits in prison. “The Gospel was preached even to the dead, that though judged in the f lesh like men, they might live in the spirit of God” (I Peter 4:6). Our ancestors rest in the Spirit of God. As the Spirit of communication the divine Spirit effectively mediates the fellowship of the dead with Christ. The dead are allowed to participate in the life of the community of the living and the dead. Christ is portrayed as the divine Brother and redeemer of our ancestors who died without having known the gospel of Jesus Christ. Through the decent into the realm of death, Christ becomes the redeeming ancestor.119 Through Christ’s descent into the reign of death the living and the dead are inseparably connected in the new life of Jesus Christ. The dead once more receive the future—the actualization of God’s grace through

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the new life of Jesus Christ. The narrative of the gospel opens the world of the dead to a future of resurrection and eternal life.120 If the dead are in God’s peace, we may find them in God’s bosom. Therefore, the “Christ event” on the cross is universally relevant because it is anticipated that the Gentiles will participate in the coming eschatological salvation (Luke 11:31f. Matt 8:11f ). The theology of the cross is a realistic basis for the universal outreach of the gospel narrative― so universal, in fact, that Christ does not negate religious outsiders, but prepares and takes them up within the theology of grace. “To this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and the living” (Rom 14:9). Toward Intercultural Ecclesiology and Cultural Reconciliation In the Christian tradition prayer in memory of the departed can indicate a proper relationship between the living and the dead in communion with the eternal life of Jesus Christ. When a certain soteriological function is assumed, the Reformation principle of solus Christus protests.121 The salvation drama begins with the covenant with Israel. Creation is integrated into this framework and Christ’s justification and reconciliation is highlighted― all moving with expectation toward the final consummation of all things. This drama includes the witness of creation (Gen 1; Ps 104), the christological completion (Col 1:15ff ), and the vision of eschatological consummation (Rev 21). According to the cosmic Christ hymn in Col 1:15–20 Christ is the foundation of all things. Paul’s Areopagus address proclaims Christ in a universal-cosmic horizon. In the God of Israel, the Creator, “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27). Christ as the first of the resurrection of the dead is the first born of all creation (Col 1:15), the one who is “the ref lection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Heb 1:3). All things in heaven and earth are reconciled with God through Christ, since he died for the reconciliation of the cosmos (II Cor 5:19). There is an eschatological horizon of Christ the Pantocrator (I Cor 15:28). Jesus Christ in a universal-cosmic configuration is bound to the universality of God’s narrative. God’s act of speaking to “our ancestors in many and various ways” (Heb 1:1) continues to effectively relate to the universal dimension of life through Christ, “heir of all things, through whom [God] also created the worlds.” “Christ sustains all things by his powerful word” (v.2). In Christ’s reconciliation (i.e., confirmation of Israel’s covenant and the beginning of the new creation),122 God’s act of speaking continues to create, heal, and redeem the brokenness of an unredeemed world through the Holy Spirit. Paul’s concept of an eschatological proviso that is reserved for Christ’s eschatological future becomes a present reality, already implemented. God “has put all things under his feet and has made him the head of the church over all things” (Eph 1:22). The church, as the body of

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Christ, must be attentive to Christ’s mission of reconciliation in the world in which God’s word-event takes place in a universal-irregular dimension. The word of the cross, according to Paul, is meshed with the word of reconciliation that awaits the eschatological coming of God. The great cosmic banquet that is yet to come is itself experienced and realized here and now in eschatological openness. This also refers to the cosmic aspect of a great cloud of witnesses (Heb 11:1–12:2) in the communion of the Eucharist. Easter morning services in the graveyards of the dead are an ancient Christian symbol of the community of the living and the dead. Christ is the redeeming ancestor and all ancestors are under Christ’s lordship.123 Given this fact, it is essential to extend and deepen a Christian understanding of prayer for the dead contextually in relation to the Confucian spirituality of communion with the dead. If ancestral rites are not meant to be worship of the departed spirits, but rather are grounded in filial piety and an ongoing memorial act of fellowship and communion with our beloved parents, should not filial piety be appreciated and integrated as the dialectical logic of the Gospel in an East Asian ecclesiology of communio sanctorum? The reconciliation of Christ with the cultural world leads to the affirmation of religious others in light of the universal narrative of God in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.124 They are woven ino the narrative of God that embraces people of the world in Christ’s reconciliation in which the Spirit blows as it wills. God’s narrative as mission finds genuine expression in the celebration of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, who descended into the world of death, by embracing our innocent ancestors. Christ’s concrete, yet universal narrative of the Gospel is expansive and costly grace for East Asian Christians who have grown up in a natural environment belonging to the dialectical logic of the Gospel, that is, filial piety.

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Conclusion

In the study of God’s mission as word-event in an age of World Christianity we have constructed a missiology of God’s narrative through word-event in the public sphere, taking seriously God’s narrative in both biblical and extra-biblical realms. In this missiological project we have considered and engaged in the reality of World Christianity in a multicultural, indigenous, and charismatic horizon. A prophetic-diaconal relevance of Christian mission is elaborated as we develop the public dimension of evangelization, socioeconomic justice, ecological sustainability, and Jewish-Christian renewal, and cross-cultural exchange in the postmodern, global context. In construction of missiology of word-event we focus on the analogicaldiscursive relationship between God, the Subject of speech, and human linguistic experience of it. God acts in narration and communication with Israel, the church, and the world. In every truly human and historical event new possibilities of bespeaking and understanding the Word of God emerge.1 A word challenges us to live from God’s future. Such eschatological existence in the event of word implies that the future of God happens to us through a word of forgiveness that addresses us as the justified children of God free from our past. God’s Word, which is God’s self-interpretation in Jesus Christ, calls Abraham for the missional blessing to the world. Abraham, in whose life Martin Luther recognizes as the cardinal example of evangelical life, articulates a model of Christian vocation for God’s mission as word-event. Jesus Christ in the Johannine context stands in continuity with Abraham, affirming that Abraham rejoiced in the day of Jesus Christ ( John 8: 56). God’s justifying and reconciling grace in light of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ tells of another grace of vocation in light of the living word-event. God’s narrative in the world through Christ’s reconciliation

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constitutes the infinite horizon for our missional and public-diaconal vocation, following the universal narrative of God’s Word in the whole creation. God’s narrative in both an ecclesial and extra-ecclesial sense tells of God as the One who weaves God’s story in communication with the church, humanity, and the world. Thus, the public sphere becomes an indispensable part woven into the narrative life world of God. This theological-missional perspective is grounded in a prophetic metanoia—turning away from the (Neo) colonial encapsulation of universality of God’s narrative, namely God’s free, living, and gracious action and communication in Jesus Christ for all. We also have attempted to seek a missiology of word-event in an analogical-discursive profile. It upholds a missional-diaconal discipleship in service of God’s narrative with the church as well as people of the world in diverse cultures and religions. The missionary program of the church is redefined and reconstituted by God’s act of mission in Trinitarian communication with the world. The church’s mission is constantly in need of renewal and reformulation in matters pertaining to God’s narrative in love, freedom, and reconciliation transpiring in different times and places. Any attempt at discovering one’s own Christian identity in a global, different context begins with a spiritual and intellectual wrestling with the irregular narrative of God’s word-event in multiple horizons. The church as the community of communion, fellowship, and diakonia is on the way to learning and deepening the living voice of God which may occur in an ecclesial as well as extra-ecclesial sphere. In this, we refine and retrieve an Asian Confucian theory of interpretation to facilitate the broadening of the spectrum of God’s self-communication through the critical and analytical investigation of worldly affairs and an extension of scientific knowledge in promotion of people’s actual lives. A metaphor of “the moon ref lecting itself in ten thousand streams” (Zhu Xi) must be understood and actualized in the real life of people so that God’s speech takes place for the sake of the marginalized and the victim. At the heart of an Asian analogical, irregular hermeneutic is the acknowledgment and respect of diverse expressions of the truth. This hermeneutic is driven by the unity of theory and praxis (Wang Yangming). It calls for a participatory act in the originating event of God’s speech and a critical ref lection of people’s worldly affairs. God’s assumption of human f lesh enables human analogical speech about the truth of God in terms of similarity-in-difference, recognizing in human language a particular-diverse expression of the truth. A Confucian theory of interpretation facilitates irregular theology in instituting, integrating, and renewing an analogy of the other in light of the dynamism of God’s narrative in multiple horizons and through the face of minjung—the religious outsiders. This perspective offers a post-foundational (beyond colonial rule) and emancipatory insight that transcends the limitations of the Western Enlightenment framework in the emergence of World Christianity. All the great religions of the world were born in Asia. The history of Christian mission taking an inroad to Asia in the nineteenth century is

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seen as a tumbled mixture of guns, greed, and amazing grace. Western Christian countries initiated the period of the global occupation by conquering Asian and African territory and excluding the value and dignity of indigenous culture and religion. Church expansion was connected with the painful history of colonialism and imperialism. History is not the dark night in which all cats are gray. In the history of Christian mission there is God’s providential grace at work in the midst of human confusion. It is not easy to generalize the thesis of an espousal between western imperialism and western missionaries in an Asian context without reservation. The history of the collisions of different cultures and religions is far more complex than such a generalized and accusatory hypothesis. The alliance between religion and empire is multilayered like an artichoke. The task of a missiologist is to peel the layers apart with care, separating Christian mission from the empire without sidestepping the issues of its unfortunate collaboration. This missiological task calls for an endeavor to conceptualize a missiology of word-event in a wider spectrum and propose it from an intercultural perspective in an era of World Christianity. For the task of constructing a prophetic-diaconal missiology, it is especially significant to appropriate a language of analogy in an irregulardiscursive manner. A theological turn to analogy pursues a middle way between positive and negative theology to transcend monistic and pan (en) theistic tendencies in a discourse of God’s relationship with the world. In the western metaphysical-theological tradition, Platonic epistemology is directed to gain knowledge of the Ideal through the idealized logos (word reason). Analogy is a middle ground between parity and disparity, a similarity in greater dissimilarity. However, the Platonic doctrine of analogy is not adequate to speak of God’s coming to the world, since the word of God’s coming refers to a challenge and transformation of the world through the Word and the Spirit. Consequently, in the western metaphysical-theological tradition a doctrine of analogy is fused with an analogy of attribution and an analogy of proportionality which speaks of God only as the unknown God. This is not capable of narrating God’s coming into the world through Jesus Christ, accompanying those who are marginalized and victimized. A traditional doctrine of analogy as via eminentiae expresses greater dissimilarity than similarity, contradicting the gospel narration of the humanity of God in Jesus Christ, the partisan of the suffering people of God. Biblical insight into the historicity and humanity of God transforms a western traditional understanding of archetypical language of analogy and imitating theology in spiritual and ahistorical correspondence. The biblical God is not the unknown God (Acts 17:16–34). God is “the father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” ( James 1:17). God decided to become “God with us” as Immanuel (Isa 7:14; Matt 1: 23). God’s Word is historically becoming, addressing the church and the world in light of God’s coming. It breaks into the church and the world as both an irruption and transformation for the sake of

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the kingdom of God. In this process of God’s mission as word-event the church is surprised, delighted, and renewed by the irregular horizon of God’s narrative. Thereby, the Word of God comes to us as a living voice of God, whether ecclesial or extra-ecclesial. The Holy Spirit accompanies with the Word of God. A mission of word-event indicates that the Spirit searches everything and acknowledges even the depths of God (1 Cor 2:10). We have received the Spirit that is from God. Thus we speak of these things in words taught by the Spirit who interprets spiritual gifts. The mission of word-event in Trinitarian communication filters and purifies the church, placing it under Jesus’ sociobiographical solidarity with his people in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ as the circumcised diakonos (Rom 15:8) is foundational for God’s mission in a prophetic-diaconal horizon, bringing the good news to the poor. It proclaims release to the captives and recovering sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed (Luke 4:18). Subsequently, God’s mission of forgiveness of sin invites people, whether they are rich or poor, to God’s life in freedom, emancipation, and recognition of the other. The church evangelizes by serving the glad tidings of God’s narrative in promise, love, and reconciliation, bringing reconciliation to the world and promoting the full humanity of those on the margins. Thus Jesus becomes the analogy and parable of God’s mission as word-event. Insofar as Jesus is called the parable of word-event, creating the language of faith, awakening us to participate in the mission of God’s kingdom, and embracing those on the underside of history, our task is to go behind the linguistic expression of faith toward the truth of the language event, at the heart of which is the kingdom of God. The Word of God which took the form of human speech in a given time can be translated and understood in a different time and place in our hermeneutical-practical engagement with Jesus’ mission of the kingdom of God. The hermeneutical problem includes the unfinished and open-ended task of translation and interpretation in the transcultural fusion of horizons as well as in the sense of an irregular, radical, and transversal transference of meaning. This aspect speaks of a transculturation of the Word in new and different words and religious-cultural belief system. God’s narrative is transculturated in the diverse cultural streams and expressions. The Word of God challenges us to live from God’s promise and future. Such eschatological existence implies that the future of God happens to us through word-event in the reconciling life of Jesus Christ. The future of God, which began in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, implies the freedom of God who speaks to the church through the face of religious outsiders by folding God’s salvific drama in narration with them. This challenges the church’s interest in self-preservation and parochialism. As Bonhoeffer rightly argued in prison, “Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world.”2 In the world of competing civilization

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trapped in a deadly dance of violence and injustice, Jesus, the Lamb of God, comes to us as the reconciling love, forgiveness, and peace for Israel, the church, and the world. Biblical thought is oriented toward God’s practical and historical activity which encourages the church to follow and uphold God’s mission in the covenant with Israel and the gospel of Jesus Christ for all in the whole creation. The biblical emphasis is given to a greater similarity between God and man in the person of Jesus Christ who is the parable (or analogy) of God. In Jesus’ mission for God’s kingdom we discover a sublime idea of God’s faithfulness to Israel in the universal embrace of all, along with our ethical responsibility for the other and life of all creatures. God’s grace of justification, reconciliation, and vocation upholds the right of all creaturely life as it pertains to God’s saving action from futility and decay. The pro-missio of God’s kingdom is the ground for the missio of Christ’s love, praxis of God’s kingdom, and reconciliation to the world in the whole creation. God’s pro-missio is reread and reinterpreted as we encounter the irregular narrative as woven in God’s salvific drama. This perspective leads to transformative recognition and hospitality of the other through which God’s narrative continues to unfold. We search for the lost story of those who have been buried and excluded in a universalizing history of modernity and scientific technology. Minjung, the suffering people of God, find a locus in God’s salvific history—a mission of God’s narrative. God’s narrative manifested in word-event stands in protest of the social structure of violence and injustice that legitimates dominion and privilege built at the cost of the innocent victims. Thus, the Christian mission becomes eminently a practical and public theology replete with mission and evangelization of God narrative for the innocent victim. It takes issue with the social, cultural structure that generates the poverty, suffering of the innocent people, and exclusion of the others. The Word of God is addressed to the church and the world, irrupting, renewing, and transforming them in light of the coming of God’s kingdom. In faith, human beings follow and participate in God’s salvific narrative, namely mission of word-event through an analogical-discursive imagination and public discipleship. The material subject matter of God’s narrative and the formal aspect (cultural-linguistic conceptual framework) underscores a missiology of God’s narrative in the public sphere to accentuate a sociocultural dimension of discourse and an intercultural perspective of emancipation. This aspect refers to missional contribution to the public theology through a hermeneutical-prophetic profile. The humanity of God in Christ is thinkable and speakable as it is grounded in an analogy enacted by God in the coming to the world. Human beings can talk about God as the addressing and the coming. This is an analogical-eschatological way of performing a theology of mission in accordance to God’s life-giving mission and narrative. Analogy becomes a theological language for understanding the universal narrative of God’s Word, while facilitating the church to participate in an open-ended

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life-giving process of the Spirit. The church is faithful to God’s mission in Trinitarian life. In the humanity of God, Jesus Christ, God has performed God’s mission as word-event. The Spirit searches the death of God (1 Cor 2:10) and this Spirit in Joel 2: 28–29 will pour on all f lesh. According to Acts 2:1–13, this is realized historically in Jerusalem. God is not a selfclosed, unmoved mover which traditional theology intimates. Rather, the Spirit is aware of the “depth of the riches, wisdom, and knowledge of God” (Rom 11:33). Since God’s character is historical, transformative, eschatological, and missional, a missiology of word-event should also be of analogicaldiscursive character and socially historically engaged. This missiology is based on the humanity of God—Jesus Christ who uses sociocritical, irregular, and dissimilar parabolic language for the kingdom of God by accompanying the life of massa perditionis. The language of massa perditionis is integrated into Jesus’ parabolic talk about the truth of God’s kingdom. It is critical, subversive, and open ended toward God’s mission of wordevent as coming. God’s self-communication in Jesus Christ challenges the powerful and the rich to be humble before God’s care of those at the margins and encourages them to stand in promotion of their full humanity. This perspective underpins a prophetic-diaconal dimension of Christian mission in the public sphere. Theology is conditioned by historical time and a particular cultural situation. An irregular-discursive perspective in the study of Christian mission of word-event precipitates a dialectical analysis of power-knowledge connections in one’s social location. It strives to reconstruct the discourse of the marginalized and innocently victimized in light of the living, free, and emancipating Word of God in Jesus Christ under the guidance of the Spirit. Parrhēsia is a verbal activity of the church’s mission for the sake of minjung, the suffering people of God. They are burdened, representing God’s minority people, that is, those on the underside of the universal history. A church, as mission community, and theologia crucis find their permanent role in becoming negativity and corrective to the totalizing metanarrative. Moreover, the church underscores parrhēsia for the sake of those downtrodden in different place and time. The church and society thus understand that they are in need of continual renewal, inspired by the subject matter of God’s narrative as well as in listening to the irregulartransversal voice of God through the face of the other. The church is called and mandated to continue Jesus’ mission of evangelizing the coming of God’s kingdom in the public sphere. The church also evangelizes by announcing and promoting cultural reconciliation in an age of World Christianity. The announcement of God’s future, which transpired in Jesus Christ, makes the church into a faith community whose prayer is maranatha. In light of God’s coming, the Gospel in God’s narrative ref lects on diverse and different streams. The language of the wisdom and spirituality

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of religious outsiders can be hermeneutically refined as an extraordinary, analogical, and irregular medium witnessing to the mission of God’s narrative. Our witness to the Gospel in God’s narrative is a prophetic diakonia to God’s mission that grasps and renews the church in expectation of the coming of God. Mission to the world (kerygma, diakonia, koinonia, and martyria) enriches and renews the life of the church as the community of missional and public vocation in light of God’s living and free narrative. Hence, God’s mission as word-event weaves the stories and the painful history of God’s suffering people through God’s narrative of promise, love, and solidarity. It comes to us as the fullness of God grounded in God’s life giving in Christ under the guidance of the Spirit. I pray that . . . he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend . . . what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Eph 3:16–19)

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NOT E S

Introduction: God’s Mission as Word-Event in the Public Sphere and World Christianity 1. Throughout this book I use the term “Global Christianity” and “World Christianity” interchangably. 2. Benjamin Valentin, Mapping Public Theology: Beyond Culture, Identity, and Difference. (Harrisburg, London, and New York: Trinity Press International, 2002), 83. 3. Gary M. Simpson, Critical Social Theory: Prophetic Reason, Civil Society, and Christian Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1989), 141–145. 4. Don S. Browning, and Francis S. Fiorenza, eds. Habermas, Modernity, and Public Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 1–5. 5. Max L. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy: Christian Stewardship in Modern Society (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 20–21. 6. Valentin, Mapping Public Theology, 86. See further for this orientation of public theology, Gordon D. Kaufman, In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993). 7. Jürgen Moltmann, God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology (London: SCM Press, 1999). 8. Martin Marty, The Public Church (New York: Crossroad, 1981); Ronald F. Thiemann, Constructing a Public Theology: The Church in a Pluralistic Culture (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991). 9. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 10; Cited in Thiemann, Constructing a Public Theology, 21. 10. Thiemann, Revelation and Theology: The Gospel as Narrated Promise (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), 74–75. 11. David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism. (New York: Crossroad, 1981). 12. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy, 1–15. 13. Tracy, Theology, Critical Social Theory, and the Public Realm, in Bowning and Fiorenza, eds. Habermas, Modernity, and Public Theology, 25–26. 14. David Tracy, and John B. Cobb, Jr., Talking About God (New York: Seabury Press, 1983), 9; see further Tracy, Analogical Imagination, 64. 15. Valentine, Mapping Public Theology, 85. For this type of public theology, see Linell E. Cady, Religion, Theology, and American Public Life (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1993). 16. Valentin, Mapping Public Theology, 87. 17. Stackhouse, Public Theology and Political Economy. 30–34. For the connection between missional movements and public theology, Ibid., 68–71. 18. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Making of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). 19. Hans -G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd. Rev. Ed. and Trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York, London: Continuum, 2004), 302.

242 1

Notes Mapping God’s Mission in an Age of World Christianity

1. Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 4, 89. 2. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Erdmans and Geneva: WCC, 1989), 8. 3. Isaiah Berlin, The Age of Enlightenment (Boston: Houghton Miff lin, 1956), 14. 4. René Descartes, Discourse on the Method, trans. Laurence J. Laf leur (Indianapolis, IN: BobbsMerrill, 1960), 24. 5. Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment? (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1959), 85. 6. Paul Lakeland, Postmodernity: Christian Identity in a Fragmented Age (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1997), 13. 7. For the term “iron cage,” see Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Dover Publications, 1958), 182. 8. Cf. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action I: Reason and The Rationalization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Boston Press, 1984). 9. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 27–28. 10. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Random HousePantheon, 1970), 386–387. 11. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd ed., 19. 12. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis. (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1998), 162. 13. Levinas, Die Spur des Andreren, trans. Wolfgang Nikolaus Krewaui (Freiburg: Alber, 1983), 235. 14. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 6. 15. J.-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 24. 16. Ibid., 23–24. 17. David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004), 362. 18. Hwa Yung, Mission and Evangelism: Evangelical and Pentecostal Theologies in Asia, in Christian Theology in Asia, ed. Sebastian C. H. Kim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 263–264. 19. Koo D. Yun, Minjung and Asian Pentecostals, in Asian Contextual Theology for the Third Millennium: Theology of Minjung in Fourth-Eye Formation, eds. Paul S. Chung et al (Eugene: Pickwick, 2007), 93. 20. Jenkins, The Next Christendom, 12–13. 21. Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, ed. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998), 2. 22. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Making of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). 23. Diana L. Eck, A New religious America: How a “Christian Country” has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 4. 24. Ibid., 9. 25. Bosch, Transforming Mission, 16. 26. Samuel H. Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia: Vol. II, 1500–1900 (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2005), 297. 27. Choon C. Pang, Studying Christianity and Doing Theology extra ecclesiam in China, in Christian Theology in Asia, ed. Sebastian C.H. Kim, 97. 28. Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004), 259. 29. Jenkins, The Next Christendom, 8. 30. Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity: The Gospel beyond the West (Grand Rapids, MN: Wm.B. Eerdmans, 2003), 35. 31. Ibid., 10.

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32. Bevans, and Schroeder, Constants in Context, 105, 184, 187, 189. See further Peter C. Phan, In Our Own Tongues: Perspectives from Asia on Mission and Inculturation (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2003), 161. 33. Leonardo Boff, Ecology and Liberation: A New Paradigm (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995). 34. Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire, eds. Catherine Keller, Michael Nausner, and Mayra Rivera (Missouri: Chalice, 2004), 8. 35. Ibid., 12. 36. Aloysius Pieris, S. J., An Asian Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1988), 69. 37. Gaudencio Rosales, and C. G. Arévalo, eds., For All the Peoples of Asia: Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences. Documents from 1970 to 1991, vol. 1 (Maryknoll: Orbis; Quezon City: Claretian, 1992), 14. 38. Ibid., 287–288. Cf. Phan, In Our Own Tongues, 15. 39. Off the Menu: Asian and Asian North American Women’s Religion & Theology, eds. Kwok Pui-Lam et al (Louisville, KY and London: Westminster John Knox, 2007), 16. 40. Wai-Ching A. Wong, Asian theology in a changing Asia: Towards an Asian theological agenda for the twenty-first century, in CTC Bulletin, Special Supplement I (1997): 33. 41. Off the Menu, eds. Kwok Pui-lan et al, 16. 42. Kwok Pui-lan, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005). 43. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 12–13. 44. Off the Menu, eds. Kwok Pui-lan, et al. 10, 11. 45. Ulrich Duchrow, and Franz J. Hinkelammert, Property for People, not for Profit: Alternatives to the Global Tyranny of Capital (New York/London: Zed Books, 2004). 46. From Max Weber. Essays in Sociology, eds. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 50. Further see critical evaluation of Max Weber, Franz J. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death: A Theological Critique of Capitalism, trans. Phillip Berryman (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1986), 62–74. 47. From Max Weber, eds. Gerth and Mills, 122, 148–149. 48. Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism, trans. Joris De Bres. London, New York: Verso, 1975, 571. 49. Kevin Phillips, The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath (New York: Random House, 1990). 50. Ibid., 50–55. 51. Paul Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development. Principle of Marxian Political Economy. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1956), 307. 52. Georges Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971), 102. 53. Mandel, Late Capitalism, 504. 54. Duchrow and Hinkelammert, Property for People, not for Profit, 96–100. 55. Helmut Gollwitzer, An Introduction to Protestant Theology, trans. David Cairns. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982. 56. David Bosch, Transforming Mission, 435. 57. Gollwitzer, The Rich Christians and Poor Lazarus, trans. David Cairns. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970, 3–10. 58. Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. and ed. Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1999. 59. Ibid., 25–26. 60. Classic Texts in Mission & World Christianity, ed. Norman E. Thomas. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995, 194. 61. Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 110. 62. Ibid., 152. 63. Ibid., 153. 64. Ibid., 154. 65. World Council of Churches, Bangkok Assembly 1973: Minutes and Reports of the Assembly of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches. Geneva: WCC, 1973, 98. 66. Bevans and Schroeder, Constants in Context, 308. 67. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 104.

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68. Classic Texts in Mission and World Christianity, 145. 69. Samuel Escobar, The New Global Mission: The Gospel from Everywhere to Everywhere. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003, 57. 70. Duchrow and Hinkelammert, Property for People, Not for Profit. 142–143. 71. Hardt and Negri, Empire, 12. 72. Mandel, Late Capitalism, 343–376. 73. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1975, 45. 74. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, II, 344. 75. Ibid., 348. 76. Ibid., 355. 77. Francis Fiorenza, The church as a community of interpretation: political theology between discourse ethics and hermeneutical reconstruction, in Browning and Fiorenza, Habermas, eds. Modernity, and Public theology, 66–87. 78. Mandel, Late Capitalism, 521. 79. Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, 52–53. 80. Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969). 81. Paul A. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1962), 18–19. 82. Paul A. Baran, and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1966), 4. 83. Ibid., 8. 84. Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America, 11. 85. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 284. 86. Mandel, Late Capitalism, 365. 87. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 160. 88. World Conference on Mission and Evangelism, Mission in Christ’s Way: Your Will Be Done. (San Antonio, Texas, 1989), I.I.1. cited in Bevans and Schroeder, Constants in Context, 309. 89. Duchrow, Alternatives to Global Capitalism, 186. 90. Bosch, Transforming Mission, 390. 91. Classic Texts in Mission and World Christianity, ed. Norman E. Thomas, 104–105. 92. Ibid., 125–126. 93. Ibid., 126. 94. Bosch, Transforming Mission, 392. 95. Bevans and Schroeder, Constants in Context, 291. 96. Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 22. 97. Classic Texts in Mission and World Christianity, 106. 98. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), 246. 99. Ibid., 240. 100. Classic Texts in Mission and World Christianity, 111. 101. Moltmann, God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1999), 243.

2

Seeking God’s Mission as Word-Event in a Wider Horizon

1. Chung, Christian Mission and a Diakonia of Reconciliation, 9. 2. Bosch, Transforming Mission, 79–83. 3. F.-W. Marquardt, “Why the Talmud Interests Me as a Christian,” in Asian Contextual Theology for the Third Millennium, eds. Paul S. Chung et al, 207–208. 4. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, vol. 49, Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert M. Hutchins (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), 408. 5. Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett, Evolution from Creation to New Creation: Conflict, Conversation, and Convergence (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003), 158–181.

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6. Gollwitzer, Krummes Holz-aufrechter Gang, 185. 7. Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1: 258. 8. J. Andrew Kirk, What is Mission?: Theological Explorations (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2000), 177, 181. 9. Ibid., 167. 10. Frank Crüsemann, The Torah: Theology and Social History of Old Testament Law, trans. Allan W. Mahnke (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1996), 1–5. 11. Pincas Lapide and Ulrich Luz, Jesus in Two Perspectives: A Jewish-Christian Dialog, trans Lawrence W. Denef (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1985), 116. 12. Gollwitzer, An Introduction to Protestant Theology, 135. 13. R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1996), 10. 14. Krister Stendhal, Paul among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1976), 5. 15. Lapide and Luz, Jesus in Two Perspectives, 131. 16. F.-W. Marquardt, Was dürfen wir hoffen, wenn wir hoffen dürften? Eine Eschatologie. Vol.1 (Munich/ Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/ Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1993), 200–235. 17. Robert M. Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History (New York: London, Macmillan and Collier, 1980), 286. 18. Marquardt, Was dürfen wir hoffen? Eine Eschatologie. Vol.1. 327. 19. Mayra Rivera, The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God (Louisville, KY and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 134. 20. Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995), 56–65. 21. Allen, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?, 146. 22. Escobar, The New Global Mission, 117. 23. The Evangelizing Church: A Lutheran Contribution, eds. Richard H. Bliese and Craig Van Gelder (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2005), 57. 24. Bevans and Schroeder, Constants in Context, 83, 86–87, 176–177. 25. See my engagement with interfaith dialogue. Paul S. Chung, Martin Luther and Buddhism: Aesthetics of Suffering, rev. 2nd ed. (Eugene: Pickwick, 2007). 26. Karl Barth, Die Christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf, erster Band, Die Lehre vom Worte Gottes, Prolegomena zur christlichen Dogmatik, 1927, ed. Gerhard Sauter (Zurich: TVZ, 1982), 15. 27. Gilles Deleuze, Proust and Signs, trans. Richard Howard (New York: George Braziller, 1972), 149–150. 28. For the critique of apokatastasis, see Busch, Transforming Mission, 500. 29. Newbigin, The Open Secret, 58–59. 30. Bosch, Transforming Mission, 447–457. 31. Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 171–183; Bevans and Schroeder, Constants in Context, 378–385. Cf. Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1997); Peter C. Phan, ed. Christianity and the Wider Ecumenism (New York: Paragon House, 1990). 32. Chung, Christian Mission and a Diakonia of Reconciliation, 180–202. 33. C. S. Song, Tell Us Our Names (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1984), 114. 34. Tom Driver, “The case for pluralism.” In The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Towards a Pluralist Theology of Religions, John Hick and Paul F. Knitter, eds. (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987), 206. 35. Phan, In Our Own Tongues, 57; see further Chung, Martin Luther and Buddhism. 36. Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 175. 37. Bosch, Transforming Mission, 507–508. 38. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letter & Papers from Prison, New greatly enlarged edition (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971), 374. 39. Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1983), 351. 40. Moltmann, The Crucified God, 265. 41. Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology, trans. James W. Leitch (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 30. 42. Ibid., 229. 43. Ibid., 153. 44. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 124.

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45. Bertold Klappert, Miterben der Verheissung: Beiträge zum jüdisch-christlichen Dialog. (Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 2000), 201–240. 46. F.-W. Marquardt, Von Elend und Heimsuchung der Theologie: Prolegomena zur Dogmatik (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1988), 452–457. 47. Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, trans. Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996, 287. 48. Ernst Käsemann, The Eschatological Royal Reign of God (Geneva: WCC, 1980), 67; further see Bosch, Transforming Mission, 509. 49. For this critique, Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 76–84. 50. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol.3. trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Wm. B. Erdmans/ T&T Clark: Edinburgh: Grand Rapids,MI 1993), 470–483. 51. Ibid., 545. 52. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 282. 53. Ibid., 203. 54. Ibid., 33.

3

A Theology of Word-Event and Reformation

1. Cf. Bartolomé De Las Casas, The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account, trans. Herma Briffault (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1992). 2. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 24. 3. Bosch, Transforming Mission, 242. 4. WA 24, 390, 275. 5. Hans J. Iwand, “Theologie als Beruf.” Vorlesung, in Glauben und Wissen, ed. Helmut Gollwitzer, et al. Nachgelassene Werke. Bd. 1 (Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1962), 243. 6. Martin Luther, “The Smalcald Articles,” in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, eds. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 319. (=BC). 7. Gerhard Ebeling, Luther: An Introduction to His Thought, trans. R. A. Wilson. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007, 98. 8. Luther, “Preface to the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude” (1522), in Martin Luther: Selections from his Writings, John Dillenberger, ed. (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1961), 36. 9. WA I 2, 275, 1. 5. 10. Ebeling, Luther, 132. 11. WA 18, 606, 24; cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2: 521. 12. Luther, Kirchenpostille 1522 in WA 10, I, 628, 3. Cf. Ebeling, Luther, 30. 13. Ebeling, Luther, 95, 27. 14. Ebeling, “Word of God and Hermeneutics” In Gerhard Ebeling, Word and Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1963), 318. 15. Ebeling, Luther, 247. 16. Luther, “How Christians Should Regard Moses.” In Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, Timothy F. Lull, ed. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1989), 143. (=MLBTW). 17. LW 2:145. 18. LW 4: 42–44. 19. Heinrich Schmidt, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1989, 443. 20. In this light see Lutheran engagement with interfaith dialogue. Paul S. Chung, Martin Luther and Buddhism: Aesthetics of Suffering, rev. 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2007). 21. Heike A. Oberman, “Die Juden in Luthers Sicht.” In Die Juden und Martin Luther―Martin Luther und die Juden: Geschichte, Wirkungsgeschichte, Herausforderung Heinz Kremers, ed., (Neukirchen:Neukirchener Verlag, 1985),136–162. 22. Albert H. Friedlander, “Martin Luther und Wir Juden,” in ibid., 292, 295. 23. In 1523, Luther said that “ ‘dabar’ verbum et factum significat,” or “verba=res vel opera gesta.” 24. Pincas E. Lapide, “Stimmen jüdischer Zeitgenossen zu Martin Luther.” In Die Juden und Martin Luther―Martin Luther und die Juden, 172. Kremers, ed.

Notes 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69.

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Martin Luther, “The Small Catechism,” in BC 351. WA 54. 67,1–16. WA Br 5, 409. 26–29. WA DB 8, 11–31. The translation of the 1545 text can be found in LW 35: 235–251. MLBTW 119. MLBTW 119–120. WA 10 I, 1, 181, Z. 21. MLBTW 120. WA DB 8, 24, n.25/26; MLBTW 127. MLBTW 138. MLBTW 139. Martin Luther, “The Large Catechism,” BC 386–387. LW 34:112, Thesis 49. Luther, “Preface to the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude.” (1522) In Martin Luther: Selections from his Writings, John Dillenberger, ed. (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1961), 36. MLBTW 120. WA 10 I, 1. 182. Z. 6. Johannes P. Boendermaker, “Martin Luther–ein ‘semi-judaeus’? Der Einf luss des Alten Testaments und des jüdischen Glaubens auf Luther und seine Theologie.” in Wendung nach Jerusalem. Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardts Theologie im Gespräch, Hanna Lehming, et al. eds. (Munich: Chr. Kaiser/Gűtersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus), 49. Volker Stolle, Luther Texts on Mission: The Church Comes from All Nations, trans. Klaus D. Schulz and Daniel Thies. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2003, 54. MLBTW 120. WA 2, 498, 528, 560. MLBTW 142. MLBTW 143. MLBTW 130. WA 10/I.1, 17. 7–12. WA 12, 259. 8. WA 12, 275. 9–11. WA TR 1, 525. Volker, Luther Texts on Mission, 54–55. WA 57 III, 236, 4. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 114. WA 51; 242, 1–8, 15–19. Cf. Ebeling, Luther, 187. Neil R. Leroux, Luther’s Rhetoric: Strategies and Style from the Invocavit Sermons (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Press, 2002), 35. LW 1:126. Stolle, Luther Texts on Mission, 29. “Formula of Concord,” Solid Declaration art. II, in BC 561. In this regard of vocatio catholica, it is important to notice Wilhelm Loehe’s misiosnal contribution to North America. See Chung, Christian Mission and a Diakonia of Reconciliation, 100–116. Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, 17. WA 40 I, 447, 22f. See further Helmut Gollwitzer, Krummes Holz―Aufrechter Gang, 313. Chung, Christian Mission and a Diakonia of Reconciliation, 65. Luther, “An die Pfarrherren, wider den Wucher zu predigen,” in D. Martin Luthers Werke, Bd. 51 Quoted in Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (New York: The Modern Library, 1906), 649–50. WBr 2, 461, 61ff. Cited in Brecht, Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation 1521–1532, 181. For the critique of Luther’s position during the Peasant’s War, Walter Altmann, Luther and Liberation: A Latin American Perspective, trans. Mary M. Solbreg (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1992), 128–130. WA 18, 310, 10f. Luther, “An die Pfarrherren, wider den Wucher zu predigen.” InGünter Fabiunke, Martin Luther als Nationalökonom (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1963), 195. For connection of Luther’s Bible interpretation to socio-critical interpretation of the Bible, see Helmut Gollwitzer, An Introduction to Protestant Theology, 58.

248

Notes

70. Hans J. Iwand, The Righteousness of Faith According to Luther, trans. Randi H. Lundell and ed. Virgil F. Thompson (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2008), 21. 71. Gollwitzer, “Homo Politicus,” in Helmut Gollwitzer, Auch das Denken darf dienen: Aufsätze zu Theologie und Geistesgeschichte Bd. 1 (Munich: Kaiser, 1988), 290–300. 72. Iwand, Luthers Theologie, 206–207. 73. Gerhard O. Forde, Justification by Faith―A Matter of Death and Life (Miff lintown, PA: Sigler Press, 1990), 93. 74. LW 37: 361. 75. H. Paul Santmire, The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1985), 128. 76. LW 12: 119.121. Cf. Santmire, The Travail of Nature, 131. 77. WA 40: 1.94. Cf. Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development, trans. and ed. Roy A. Harrisville (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 213. 78. LW 22: 26. 79. WA 39 II, 239, 29–31. Cf. Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology, 235. 80. Ibid., 237. 81. LW 57: 57. Steve Bouma-prediger, The Greening of Theology: The Ecological Models of Rosemary Ruether, Joseph Sittler, and Jürgen Moltmann (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 114–119. 82. Tuomo Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther’s View of Justification, ed. Kirsi Stjerna (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005). 83. BC 355. 84. WA 39 I, 370, 18–371, 1 (1. Disputatio gegen die Antinomer); Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology, 238. 85. LW 21:299. 86. LW 40, 146. 87. Luther, “Day of Christ’s Ascension Into Heaven” (Mark 16:14–20), in Sermons of Martin Luther, John Nicholas Lenker, ed. vol.3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 190. 88. BC 174. 89. LW 43, 198. 90. LW 35. 30–31. 91. Karl Barth, Theologische Fragen und Antworten (Zollikon: EVZ, 1957), 104–105, 114–115. Cf. Classic Texts in Mission & World Christianity, Norman E. Thomas, ed., 106. 92. Ibid., 105. 93. Ibid., 126. 94. For this critique, see Georges Vicedom, The Mission of God, trans. Gilbert A. Thiele and Denis Hilgendorf (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia, 1965), 69. 95. The Augsburg Confession, art. VII, in BC 42, 43. 96. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 202. 97. Ibid., 120. 98. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology, ed. Wayne Whitson Floyd, Jr., trans. H. Martin Rumscheidt (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1996), 161. 99. “The Augsburg Confession,” art. V, in BC 40, 41. 100. MLBTW, 247. 101. Bosch, Transforming Mission, 249, 255–256. 102. Norman E. Thomas, ed. Classic Texts in Mission & World Christianity, 104. 103. Ibid., 105. 104. Ibid. 105. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/3.2: 837, G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, eds. (London and New York: T. & T. Clark, 2004). In the main text we use CD for the abbreviation of Church Dogmatics. 106. For the relation between Barth’s theology of diakonia to the tradition of Wichern and Blumhardt, see Chung, Christian Misison and a Diakonia of Reconciliation, 83–100, 116–133, 133–144. 107. For Barth’s political radicalism, see Paul S. Chung, Karl Barth: God’s Word in Action (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade, 2008), 419–448. 108. Ebeling, “Word of God and Hermeneutics” in Gerhard Ebeling, Word and Faith, 318.

Notes

249

109. In the second edition of Romans (1922), Barth already articulates a unity between exegesis and socio-historical criticism in which “the historical critics, it seems to me, need to be more critical!” Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn Hoskyns (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 10. 110. Karl Barth, The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics, vol. IV/3, pt.4. Lecture Fragments, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1981), 250. 111. For Luther’s inf luence on Karl Barth, see Chung, Karl Barth, 345–376. 112. Karl Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum, trans. Keith R. Crim (Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1969), 36–37. 113. Bertold Klappert, Israel und die Kirche: Erwägungen zur Israellehre Karl Barths (Munich: Kaiser, 1980), 76. 114. Eberhard Busch, Unter dem Bogen des einen Bundes: Karl Barth und die Juden 1933–1945 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1996). 115. Katherine Sonderegger, That Jesus Christ was born a Jew: Karl Barth’s ‘Doctrine of Israel’ (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 123, 129, 146. 116. F.-W. Marquardt, Das Christliche Bekenntnis zu Jesus, dem Juden. Eine Christologie 2 (Munich/ Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser, Güthersloher Verlagshaus, 1991), §7. 117. F.-W. Marquardt, Die Entdeckung des Judentums für die Christliche Theologie: Israel im Denken Karl Barths (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1967), 352. 118. Barth, “Unsere Kirche und die Politsche Frage von Heute (1938),” In” Karl Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme: 1938–1945 (Zurich: TVZ, 1985), 90. 119. Ibid., 307–333. 120. Ibid., 18–19. 121. R. R. Geis, Leiden an der Unerlöstheit der Welt: Briefe, Reden, Aufsätze, D. Goldschmidt and I. Übershär, eds. Munich: Chr. Kaiser 1984, 240. 122. Chung, Karl Barth, 392. 123. Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum, 36–37. 124. Karl Barth, Briefe 1961–1968, J. Fangmeier and H. Stoevesandt, eds. (Zurich: TVZ, 1975), 504. 125. Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum, 37. 126. Chung, Karl Barth, 419–448. 127. Barth, The Christian Life, Church Dogmatics vol. IV/4, pt 4 Lecture Fragments, 220. 128. Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, trans. John Bowden (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 402. 129. Marquardt, “Feinde um unsretwillen,” In F.-W. Marquardt, Verwegenheiten: Theologische Stücke aus Berlin (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1981), 315. 130. Marquardt, Die Entdeckung des Judentums, 296. 131. Thiemann, Constructing A Public Theology, 24. See Thiemann’s discussion of Karl Barth in light of public theology, “3. Karl Barth and the Task of Constructing a Public Theology,” 75–95. 132. Ibid., 21. 133. Already in his Tambach Lecture as seen in connection with the thesis IV of his Amsterdam lecture (“Church and Culture”), Barth’s theology of analogy is socially engaged, culturally open and christologically universal in light of God’s reconciliation. See Chung, Karl Barth, 184–191. 134. George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 263. 135. Earlier on Barth already accepts Söhngen’s thesis in the christological sense: There has to be an assumptio of the analogia entis by the analogia fidei –“the analogia fidei is sanans et elevens analogiam entis”―namely but through Jesus Christ (CD II/1:82). 136. F.-W. Marquardt, Theologie und Sozialismus: Das Beispiel Karl Barths (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1972), 264. 137. Ibid., 254. 138. Karl Barth, Gespräche IV, 1964–1968, Eberhard Busch, ed. (Zurich: TVZ, 1997), 401. 139. T. F. Torrance, Karl Barth, Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990), 147. 140. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1, John T. McNeil, ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster 1960), II, 13.4.

250

Notes

141. Marquardt, Theologie und Sozialismus, 260. Accordingly, Otto Weber states that the logos asarkos can be only a pure boundary concept for Barth. See Otto Weber, Grundlagen der Dogmatik II (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1987), 143. 142. Marquardt, Theologie und Sozialismus, 263. 143. CD IV/2: 60. 144. Marquardt, Theologie und Sozialismus, 264. 145. Karl Barth, Christ and Adam: Man and Humanity in Romans 5, trans. T. A. Smail (Edinburgh, London: Oliver and Boyd, 1956), 50. 146. Bertold Klappert, Versöhnung und Befreiung: Versuche, Karl Barth kontextuell zu verstehen (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1994), 50. 147. Barth, Gespräche 1964–1968, 565. 148. Barth, Ad Limina Apostolorum, 37. 149. Karl Barth, Die Christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf, vol.1, Gerhard Sauter, ed. (Zurich: TVZ, 1982), 15. 150. Busch, Karl Barth, 468. 151. Klappert, Versöhnung und Befreiung, 45–46. 152. Busch, Karl Barth, 203. 153. Katsumi Takizawa, “Was hindert mich getauft zu werden.” In Das Heil in Heute: Texte einer japanischen Theologie, Theo Sundermeier, ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), 37. 154. Marquardt, Das christliche Bekenntnis zu Jusus dem Juden: Eine Christologie 1, 28–43. 155. Lai Pan-chiu, Barth’s Theology of Religion and the Asian Context of Religious Pluralism. Asia Journal of Theology 15.2 (October 2001): 262–263; 247–267. 156. Timothy J. Gorringe, Karl Barth: Against Hegemony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 157. Paul S. Chung, Constructing Irregular Theology: Bamboo and Minjung in East Asian Perspective (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2009). 158. Chung, et al. Asian Contextual Theology for the Third Millennium, 1–14. 159. For an irregular christological perspective on parrhēsia, see chapter VI. 2. “Asian Theological Contribution to Jesus Christ” in this book. 160. Chung, Constructing Irregular Theology, 1–3.

4

1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Reconstructing God’s Narrative as Mission in a Hermeneutical-Intercultural Configuration

Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989), 1. H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper Colophone, 1951). Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 89. Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1969), 3–13; further see Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 139–140. Berger and Luckmann, “Sociology of Religion and Sociology of Knowledge,” In Sociology and Social Research 47 (1963): 422. Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 54. Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 60. Tillich, Theology of Culture, 42. Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1997), 63–9. Norman E. Thomas, Classic Texts in Mission and World Christianity, 212. Ibid., 213. Ibid., 214. Ibid., 208. Allen, Missionary Methods, 54. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 146–147. Norman E. Thomas, ed. Classic Texts in Mission and World Christianity, 216. Ibid., 218.

Notes

251

18. The Lutheran World Federation’s Nairobi Statement on Worship and Culture (1996); the World Council of Churches’ Jerusalem Statement “On Intercultural Hermeneutics” (1995); and the Report from the WCC-WCME Ecumenical Conference in Salvador, de Bahia, Brazil (1996). See James A. Scherer and Stephen B. Bevans. eds. New Directions in Mission and Evangelization, vol.3, Faith and Culture. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1999, 177–234. 19. Ibid, 182. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., 183. 22. Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, 103. 23. Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 196–197. 24. Helmut Gollwitzer, The Existence of God as Confessed by Faith, trans. James W. Leitch (London: SCM,1965), 179, 185. 25. John Dominic Crossan, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 22, 32–33. 26. Crossan, The Dark Interval Towards A Theology of Story (Sonoma, California: Polebridge Press, 1988), 57–60. 27. Paul Ricoeur, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” Semeia 4 (1975): 108, 122–128. Further see Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1982), 47. 28. Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, 105. 29. Ibid., 102. 30. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 289. Cf. Joseph Palakeel, The Use of Analogy in Theological Discourse: An Investigation in Ecumenical Perspective (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1995), 204. 31. Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, 409. 32. Ibid., 410. 33. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 245. 34. Ibid., 290. See Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics & the Human Sciences, ed. and trans. John B. Thomson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 165–181. 35. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 202. 36. Ian G. Barbour, Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues, rev. ed. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997). 37. Dan R. Stiver, Theology after Ricoeur: New Directions in Hermeneutical Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 118–119. 38. Ebeling, “Word of God and Hermeneutics” in Gerhard Ebeling, Word and Faith, 318. 39. Ricoeur, “Structure, Word, Event.” In Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interprettaion: Essays in Hermeneutics, ed. Don Ihde (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 96. 40. James M. Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, vol.1. Theology and Ethics. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981), 52. 41. Gollwitzer, An Introduction to Protestant Theology, 142–143. 42. Cf. Sallie McFague, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1993). 43. Gollwitzer, An Introduction to Protestant Theology, 153. 44. Thomas L. Shubeck, S. J. Liberation Ethics: Sources, Models, and Norms (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), 22. 45. R.S. Sugirtharajah, Asian Biblical Hermeneutics and Postcolonialism: Contesting the Interpretations (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1998), 127; cf. For Peter Phan’s discussion of postcolonial hermeneutics, see Phan, In Our Own Tongues, 195–197. 46. Phan, In Our Own Tongues, 196. 47. Kwok Pui-lan, Discovering the Bible in Non-Biblical World (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995), 36; Ibid., 197. 48. Gary M. Simpson, “Theologia crucis and the Forensically Fraught World: Engaging Helmut Peukert and Jürgen Habermas,” In Browning and Fiorenza, eds. Habermas, Modernity, and Public Theology (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 173–205. 49. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1998), 6, 46–7. 50. Mayra Rivera, The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God (Westminster: John Knox Press, 2007), 128. 51. Kim Kyoung-jae, Christianity and the Encounter of Asian Religions (Uitgeverij Boekencentrum: Zoetermeer, 1994), 63.

252

Notes

52. Archie C. C. Lee, “Cross-textual Hermeneutics and Identity in multi-scriptural Asia.” In Christian Theology in Asia, Sebastian C.H. Kim, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008),179–204. 53. Panikkar, Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics. New York: Paulist, 1979, 8. 54. Ibid., 9. 55. Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1964), 43. 56. Panikkar, “The Jordan, The Tiber, and The Ganges: Three Kairological Moments of Christic Self-Consciousness,” in John Hick and Paul Knitter, eds., The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, 92. 57. Aloysius Pieris, S. J. Love Meets Wisdom: A Christian Experience of Buddhism (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988), 5. 58. Ibid., 27. 59. Ibid., 33. 60. Ibid., 35–36. 61. Ibid., 39. 62. Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, rev. trans. and ed. Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1999), 116–120, 169–171. 63. Pieris, Love Meets Wisdom, 37. 64. Ibid., 40. 65. Ibid., 123. 66. Ibid., 122. 67. Ibid., 123. 68. Ibid., viii. 69. Foucault’s genealogy can be understood in terms of his synchronic hermeneutic of the subject and via negativa. See Michel Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject. New York: Picador, 2001. 70. Sebastian C.H. Kim, ed. Christian Theology in Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 71. David, M. Thompson, “Introduction: Mapping Asian Christianity in the Context of World Christianity,” in ibid., 12. 72. Paul S. Chung et al., Asian Contextual Theology for the Third Millennium: Theology of Minjung in Fourth-Eye Formation. (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick, 2007). 73. Jacob Kavunkal, “The Mystery of God in and through Hinduism,” in Christian Theology in Asia, ed. Kim, 39. 74. Phan, In Our Own Tongues, 192–200. 75. Ibid., 23. 76. Archie C. C. Lee, “Cross-textual Hermeneutics and Identity in Multi-scriptural Asia,” in ibid., 200. 77. Ibid., 192. 78. Ibid., 187. 79. Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity Press; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), 205. 80. James Creech, Peggy Kamuf, and Jane Todd, “Deconstruction in America: An Interview with Jacques Derrida,” Critical Exchange 17 (1985): 12. 81. Diane P. Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer, Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Ecounter (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1989), 5. 82. David Couzens Hoy, “Splitting the Difference: Habermas’s Critique of Derrida,” In Maurizio Passerin d’Entreves and Seyla Benhabib, eds. Habermas and the Unifinished Project of Modernity: Critical Essays on The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1997), 134. 83. Levinas, Basic Philosophical Writings, Adrian T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi, eds. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), 38. 84. Jacques Derrida, “How to Avoid Speaking: Denials,” In Harold Coward and Toby Foshay, eds. Derrida and Negative Theology (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992), 84. 85. Ibid., 79. 86. Ibid., 85. 87. Ibid., 74. 88. Ibid., 81. 89. Ibid., 76. 90. Ibid.

Notes

253

91. For the critical analysis of the relationship between Bultmann and Ebeling, see Pannenberg, Theology and The Philosophy of Science, 169–177. 92. Ibid., 281–282. 93. Jüngel, God as The Mystery, 261–298. 94. For interpretation of the said and unsaid, see Chung, Martin Luther and Buddhism, 325–333.

5

Hermeneutic of God’s Narrative and Confucian Theory of Interpretation

1. Nam-soon Kang, “Who/What Is Asian?: A Postcolonial Theological Reading of Orientalism and Neo-Orientalism,” In Postcolonial Theologies, Catherine Keller et al., eds., (Missouri: Chalice, 2004),114, 105. 2. Tu Weiming, Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. 3. Kwok Pui-lan, “Fishing the Asia Pacific: Transnationalism and feminist theology.” In Off the Menu, Kwok, et al., eds., (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox, 2007), 11. 4. Ibid. 5. Xinzhong Yao, An Introduction to Confucianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 270–279. Further see Robert Neville, Boston Confuciasm: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2000). 6. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. and eds. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 286. 7. Max Weber, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism (New York: Free Press, 1968), 146, 235. Against Weber’s view, some Confucian scholars insist that Confucianism is an ethical form of humanism open to a profound sense of the religion. For Confucianism as religious Humanism, see Julia Ching, Chinese Religions (Maryknoll, Orbis, 1993) 51–67; further see Yao, Xinzhong, Confucianism and Christianity (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1996). 8. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. and ed. Gerth and Mills, 293. 9. Ibid., 416. 10. Ibid., 431. 11. Ibid., 441. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 431. 14. Ibid., 428. 15. Ibid., 433. 16. Chu His Learning to Be a Sage: Selections from the Conversations of Master Chu, Arranged Topically, trans. with a Commentary by Daniel K. Gardner (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1990), 43. 17. Ibid., 47. 18. Fung, Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, II, trans. Derk Bodde (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 561. 19. The Chinese Classics 1, trans. James Legge (Oxford: Clarendon, 1893), 365–366. 20. Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, II, 561. 21. Ibid., 541. 22. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 271. 23. Ibid. 24. Ricoeur, “Structure, word, event,” in Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, 93. 25. Chung, Karl Barth, 330–344. 26. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 466. 27. Ibid., 474. 28. Palakeel, The Use of Analogy, 167. 29. Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity, 22. 30. Junjie Huang, Mencius Hermeneutics: A History of Interpretation in China (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001), 185. 31. Palakeel, The Use of Analogy in Theological Discourse, 187. 32. Plato, The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee (London, New York: Penguin, 1987). 33. Ibid., 534b3f; 532a6-b1.

254 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

Notes

Jüngle, God as the Mystery of the World, 267. Ibid., 270. Ibid., 269. Jüngel is critical of Aristotle’s notion of analogy in that this analogy as the middle ground between univocity and equivocity is concerned only about the imperfect signification of creaturely language. This analogy as via eminentiae is no less than negative theology, speaking of God only as unknown and ineffable. This analogy turns out to be agonistic. Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 279. Aristotle, “Nicomachean ethics,” In A New Aristotle Reader, J. L. Ackrill, ed., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 370. Aristotle, “Politics,” in ibid., 509. Aristotle, “De Interpretatione,” in ibid., 14. In his exploration of analogy in Aristotle’s thought, Jüngel completely sidesteps this aspect of analogy and interpretation involved in the material realm. Jüngel, God as Mystery, 269, 270, 271. Jüngel’s theology of analogy is not adequate to consider the social material side of wordevent. Bevans and Schroeder, Constants in Context, 176. Las Casas, The Devastation of the Indies, 9. Duchrow, Alternatives to Global Capitalism, 21–23. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 130. Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, II. 596–597. Wing-tsit Chan, Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings by Wang YangMing, trans. (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1963), 94. Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, II. 601. Instructions for Practical Living, Sec. 101. 64; see secs.162, 236, and 270. Ibid., Sec. 5.10. Ibid., Sec. 6.13. Ibid., Sec.7.15. Philip J. Ivanhoe, Ethics in the Confucian Tradition, 2 nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 124. http://chinese.dsturgeon.net/text.pl?node=2799&if=en&remap=gb This translation comes from my colleague Cathy Chang. http://www.archive.org/stream/gslzi/gslzi10.txt Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: SUNY, 1996), 154. Heidegger, “The Way to Language,” In Martin Heidegger, Basic Wrings, rev. & exp. Ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), 420. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, I. trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983), 33, 36. Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, 348–349. Paul William, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (London: Routledge, 1989), 203. Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Keys, trans. Albert and Jean Low (Garden City: Anchor, 1974), 47. The Poem of Ruan Ji, trans. Wu Fusheng and Graham Hartill (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2006), 39.

6 Intercultural Theology as a Prophetic Mission of God’s Narrative 1. Bosch, Transforming Mission, 456. 2. Bruce Demarest, General Revelation: Historical Views and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 255. 3. Panikkar, The Trinity and World Religions (Madras: The Christian Literature Society, 1970), 42. 4. Panikkar, The Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man (New York: Orbis, 1973), 71. 5. The Trinity in a Pluralistic Age: Theological Essays on Culture and Religion, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1997), 59. 6. Panikkar, The Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 60. 7. Ibid., 51.

Notes

255

8. Panikkar, The Trinity and World Religions, 61. 9. Yi jing, Appendix III, sec. 1, ch. v, 1, 2. See Jung Young Lee, The Trinity in Asian Perspective (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 24. 10. Lee, The Trinity, 59. 11. Ibid., 59–60. 12. Ibid., 71. 13. Ibid., 73. 14. Ibid., 83. 15. Ibid., 149. 16. Ibid., 152. 17. Ibid., 278. 18. Moltmann, The Crucified God, 204. 19. Ibid., 244. 20. John B. Cobb, Jr. and Christopher Ives (eds.), The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation. (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1998), 24. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., 25. 23. Heinrich Dumoulin, Understanding Buddhism: Key Themes, trans. Joseph S. O’Leary (New York: Weatherhill, 1994), 21–4. 24. Heidegger, Being and Time, 154. See Heidegger, “The Way to Language,” in Martin Heidegger, Basic Wrings, 420. 25. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Crossroad, 2005), 136; further see Moltmann’s reception of Rahner’s rule, Moltmann, The Crucified God, 240. 26. Kazoh Kitamori, The Theology of the Pain of God (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, rep. 2005). 27. Ibid., 138. 28. Ibid., 27. 29. Ibid., 45. 30. Ibid., 47. 31. Ibid., 107. 32. Ibid., 45. Moltmann shares this model of Father’s delivering up of the Son, so that it becomes a target of critique for its implication of divine child abuse. See Moltmann, The Crucified God, 145–153. 33. Kitamori, The Theology of the Pain of God, 56. 34. Ibid., 138. 35. Kosuke Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1974), 120. 36. Ibid., 115. 37. Shusaku Endo, Silence, trans. William Johnston (New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1980), 7–24. 38. Ibid., 259. 39. Ibid., 29. 40. Pieris, An Asian Theology of Liberation, 69. 41. Against a post-Judean dating of Mark’s Gospel, see Ched Meyers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988), 41. 42. Robert B. Coote, and Mary P. Coote, Power, Politics, and the Making of the Bible: An Introduction (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1990), 109. 43. Ahn, Byung-mu, “Jesus and Ochlos in the Context of His Galilean Ministry,” In Chung, et al. Asian Contextual Theology for the Third Millennium, (Eugene: Pickwick, 2007), 36–37. 44. Luise Schottroff and Wolfgang Stegemann, Jesus von Nazareth Hoffnung der Armen. (Stuttgart, Berlin, Koln: W. Kohlhammer, 1990), 24. 45. Ahn Byung-mu, “Jesus and the Minjung in the Gospel of Mark,” In Minjung Theology: People as the Subjects of History, ed. CTC-CCA (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1981), 151 46. Ched Meyers, “For the interpretation of Ahn’s passive solidarity,” Binding the Strong Man, 440. 47. Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, 17. 48. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 104. 49. Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, 362. 50. Ibid., 382.

256 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

Notes

Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 62. Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, 361. Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, 115. Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, 360. Bonhoeffer, Christ The Center (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 35. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 64. Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, 17. Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center, 34. Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, 382. Byung-Mu Ahn, Draussen vor dem Tor, 37. Ibid. Cf. Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, 381. Byung-Mu Ahn, Draussen vor dem Tor, 37–38. Byung-Mu Ahn,”Zur dritten These der Barmer Erklärung,” Draussen vor dem Tor, 146–150. Ulrich Duchrow, Global Economy: A Confessional Issue for the Churches, trans. David Lewis (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1987), 137. Byung-Mu Ahn, “Zur dritten These der Barmer Erklärung,” Draussen vor dem Tor, 146–147. Ibid., 148. Ibid., 149. Aloysius Pieris, S.J., An Asian Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988, 69. 15. Pieris, “The Buddha and the Christ: Mediators of Liberation,” In John Hick and Paul Knitter, eds. The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987), 163. C. S. Song, Jesus, The Crucified People (New York: Crossroad, 1990). Song, Third-Eye Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1979), 6. John B. Cobb, Jr., “The Christian Witness to Buddhists,” Asian Contextual Theology for the Third Millennium, 179–197. Song, Third-Eye Theology: Theology in Formation in Asian Settings, rev. ed. (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991), 26. Song, The Crucified People (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 210–229. Song, Third-Eye Theology, 128. Ibid., 12. Wolfgang Kroeger, Die Befreiung des Minjung: Das Profil einer Protestantischen Befreiungstheologie für Asien in Ökumenischer Perspektive (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1992), 132. Robert Coote and Mary Coote, Power, Politics, and the Making of the Bible, 103. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 90–91. Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech (Los Angles: Semiotexte, 2001), 19–20. Heinrich Schlier, “παρρησία, παρρησιάζομαι.” In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, eds. vol.1 (Ann Arbor, MI: Eerdmans, 1967), 871. Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/2: 442. Klappert, Miterben der Verheissung, 186. Bevans and Schroeder, Constants in Context, 386. Phan, In Our Own Tongues, 125. Hebert Spencer, Principles of Sociology (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1974–1975. vol. 1. See his chapter on ancestral worship. Julia Ching, Chinese Religions, 17–20. Cf. Nokuzola Mndende, “Ancestors and Healing in African Religion: A South African Context,” In Ancestors, Spirits and Healing in Africa and Asia: A Challenge to the Church Ingo Wulf horst, ed. (Geneva: LWF, 2005), 13–22. The Book of Songs trans. Arthur Waley (New York: Grove Press, 1960), 209–210. Confucius: The Analects (Lun yu), trans. D.C. Lau (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979). Mencius, trans. D.C. Lau (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970). Yao, Xinzhong, An Introduction to Confucianism, 194. Ibid. Analects VI, 20. George Minamiki, The Chinese Rites Controversy from Its Beginnings to Modern Times (Chicago: Loyola University Press., 1985), 17–18. Matteo Ricci, China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Mathew Ricci: 1583–1610, trans. Louis J. Gallagher, S.J. (New York: Random House, 1942), 72. Ibid., 95.

Notes

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97. For an evaluation of Ricci’s mission, see Paul S. Chung, “Mission and Inculturation in the Thought of Matteo Ricci.” InAsian Contextual Theology for the Third Millennium, Chung et al, 303–327. 98. Sylvester B. Kahakwa, “Christ and the Ancestors in African Christian Theology.” In Ancestors, Spirits and Healing in Africa and Asia: A Challenge to the Church, LWF Studies, ed., Ingo Wulf horst (Geneva: LWF, 2005), 93. 99. Sanneh, West African Christianity, 180. 100. Luther understands the Trinity in terms of the God who speaks in communication with the divine others—the ones spoken or breathed (i.e. the Spirit). LW 22, 15–16. 101. LW 36: 342. 102. D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 61 vols. (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883–1983) (hereafter: WA). WA 30, Bd II, 8.48. 103. MLBTW 147. 104. Gollwitzer, Befreiung zur Solidarität, 79–81. 105. F.-W. Marquardt, Gott, Jesus, Geist und Leben: Das Glaubensbekenntnis erläutert und entfaltet, Dorothee Marquardt ed. (Tübingen: TVT Medienverlag, 2004), 47. 106. Martin Luther, “The Large Catechism,” in BC 401. 107. Ibid. 108. MLBTW 142. 109. MLBTW 143. 110. Martin Luther, “That Jesus Christ Was Born A Jew” (1523) in LW 45:195–229. 111. Ebeling, Luther, 115. 112. Ibid., 132. 113. Ibid., 247. 114. Ibid., 186–187. 115. Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, 348–349. 116. Chung, Martin Luther and Buddhism, 407. 117. Martin Luther, “A Sermon on Preparing to Die” in MLBTW 644–645; further see “The Large Catechism,” “Formula of Concord,” in BC 435, 514, 635. 118. Karl Barth, CREDO: Die Hauptprobleme der Dogmatik dargestellt im Anschluss an das Apostolische Glaubensbekenntnis (Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1935), 83. 119. C. Nyamiti, Christ as our Ancestor (Gweru: Simbabwe, 1984). 120. Marquardt, Gott, Jesus, Geist und Leben, 64. 121. In the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, praying for the dead is not prohibited. BC 275. 122. Moltmann’s project of the cosmic Christ, Christus semper maior (the always greater Christ), replaces the God of Israel with the creator of the universe. Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), 281. 123. Ibid., 189–192. 124. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 197.

Conclusion 1. Gerhard Ebeling, Das Wesen des Christlichen Glaubens (Tübingen: J.C.B Nohr, 1959), 252. 2. Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 300.

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I N DE X

adonai, 76 adventus, 71, 72, 75 alētheia, 180, 196 am ha’aretz, 123, 203 analogans, 134, 170 analogatum, 134, 170 analogia Dei, 139, 141 analogia doloris, 199 analogia entis, 199 analogia fidei, 170, 199 analogical-discursive, 9, 61, 76, 141, 145, 147, 148, 153, 154, 157, 163, 180, 196, 213, 234 ancestral rites, 219, 210, 220–222, 224 anti-Judaism, 107 anti-Semitism, 105, 107, 108, 110 anhypostasis, 117 apokatastasis, 63 apophansis, 15 Aqueda, 51 Aufhebung, 114 Bandung, 21, 31 being-in-the-world, 14, 15 Bhagavad-Gita, 189 bhakti, 189 Bodhisattva, 183 Brahman, 189

dabar, 81, 84, 86, 147, 159 Dei loquentis persona, 69 dependency theory, 28, 30 Deum justificare, 91 Deus dixit, 173 Deus ex machina, 183, 204 dharmakaya, 122 diachronic-syncronic, 154, 166 différance, 159, 161 disenchantment of the world, 13, 17, 23, 28 dukkha, 196, 213, 214 economic Trinity, 34 effective history, 13 Elohim, 46, 76 enhypostasis, 117 enlightenment, 12, 16, 17, 19, 33, 66, 129, 152 Ent-sprechen, 180 episteme, 14 E Pluribus Unum, 18 eschatologia crucis, 73, 76 esse sequitur operari, 97 extra Calvinisticum, 117 extra muros ecclesiae, 113, 114, 116, 125 fusion of horizons, 15 genealogy, 13, 14 God’s menuha, 44

Casino Capitalism, 23 Chinese chess game, 8 clash of civilization, 6, 18 communicatio in sacris, 152, 153 Confucius, 178, 220, 221 creatio continua, 45, 225

Halacha, 83, 217 han, 195 happy exchange, 94 homoousios, 190, 192, 193

dalit, 15, 156 da-sein, 14 Das Nichtige, 99

imago Dei, 43, 44, 46 IMF, 24, 25 immanent Trinity, 34, 196

268

Index

invisible hand, 24 iron cage, 13 irregular-transversal, 61, 158, 162 Isvara, 190

perichoresis, 69, 189, 190, 191 prajna, 207 prolepsis, 72–75, 163 Pure Land Buddhism, 113

Kristallnacht, 80

qi, 192 Qur’an, 119

larva Dei, 46 late capitalism, 24, 25, 28–30, 32 Legitimation Crisis, 29 liang zhi, 177, 178, 179, 180 linguistic-transcultural, 8 Li-principle, 171 Makom, 69 malkuth YHWH, 143 massa perditionis, 8, 33, 51, 62, 71, 111, 120, 123, 124, 139, 147, 163, 180, 181, 197, 203, 238 metanarrative, 16, 77 metanoia, 234 ministerium Verbis divini, 99 minjung, 8, 17, 33, 80, 120, 123, 124, 125, 141, 156, 162, 173, 181, 185, 186, 188, 194, 195, 198, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 215, 216, 218, 234, 237, 238 mission of Verbum Dei, 181 mizvot, 83 Monopoly Capital, 30

ren, 221 Schöpfungsordnung, 87 Shang-di, 210, 219, 220 Solo Spiritu Sancto, 92 Sophia, 54 spes naturalis, 74 Sunyata, 122, 193 supercessionism, 65 survival of the fittest, 24 Tao, 168, 170–173, 178–180, 185, 189, 192, 196 theologia gloriae, 74 theologia naturalis, 63, 74, 117 theologia viatorum, 186 theologia vitae, 67, 75 thick description, 4, 112 Third Worldism, 31 tsurasa, 198, 199 tu-shu fa, 169 Urfaktum Immanuel, 121, 122

neo-Confucianism, 9, 165, 166, 223 norma normans, 78, 158 norma normata, 78, 158 nota ecclesiae, 89 ochlos, 33, 62, 71, 124, 125, 141, 156, 162, 194, 195, 197, 201–204, 209, 211, 212, 215–218, 226 oikonomia, 176 olam haba, 68 onto-theology, 59 Opera trinitatis ad extra, 69 Opium War, 19 paranesis, 144 parrh ēsia, 60, 62, 66, 67, 125, 163, 182, 185, 186, 190, 208, 211– 215, 228, 238

Verbum Dei, 74, 170, 171, 173, 181 veritas scripturae ipsius, 105 via eminentiae, 139 via negativa, 135, 161, 194 via positiva, 172 viva vox Dei, vii, 10, 38, 58, 60, 137, 158, 162 viva vox evangelii, vii, 5, 49, 58, 74, 78, 79, 97, 101, 102, 125, 138, 142, 163, 187 YHWH, 46, 68, 71, 143, 189, 190 Yi jing, 191 yin and yang, 191–193 zebaoth, 76